Earlier I had announced contest on blog where I gave away two MSDN Subscriptions to person who has provided best comment on the subject of “Why SQL Server is better than any other RDBMS Applications?” I have received tremendous response to the contest. I got many responses, it was extremely difficult to announce the winner and I requested help of two SQL Server MVPs to help me out with the results. Here is the winner of the contest. They really spend good time and wrote about their feeling for SQL Server product. Here is their answers.
I strongly suggest that you bookmark this post as this post can be used in future when you might want to write why SQL Server is better than any other RDBMS application.
Winner #1 HARSHU
SQL Server is like most RDMS systems, a database engine but what make it better than other RDMS systems (especially SQL 2008 onwards) are new features and other bells and whistles it comes with.
Here are the few:
1. Easy integration with Microsoft Operating systems.
2. East integration with world’s most common database: Spreadsheet, Microsoft excel in particular and power pivot has significantly enhanced its value.
3. User friendly interface
4. Easy to create maintenance plans.
5. Integrated Security (windows authentication): This definitely help streamline server access based on Active directory policies and groups.
6. Mixed Authentication: Not only it gives the option to use windows authentication, it allows other applications to authenticate based on username and password
7. Disaster recovery: SQL Server is very easy to restore after a disaster (proper backup and recovery strategy needs to be implemented) as compared to other RDMS. All you need is File system restore followed by system state and then restore databases from backup. I have been involved in DR for a lot systems and doing DR on a SQL Server is much easier than any other RDMS system. Other benefits include Failover Clustering and Transaction Replication
8. Licensing: The licensing structure of SQL Server is much better as compared to other RDMS systems. Other RDMS systems have a very complex licensing structure which comes out to be much costly than SQL Server.
9. SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS): As compare to other RDMS systems tools, SSMS is the best tool for a developer or a DBA.
10. SQL Server Business Intelligence: Business Intelligence in SQL Server has come a long way and has evolved so much. It is one of the best if not the best in the market at the moment.
Since SQL Server Integration Services, SQL Server Analysis Services and SQL Server Reporting Services comes with the SQL Server license, customer doesn’t need to spend extra money on these additional tools, instead that money can be spend on something else e.g. upgrade SAN, user training.
11. Visualization
12. Administering and Monitoring: SQL Server 2008 R2 has really scored high in its new administration and monitoring tools. It has made the life of a DBA (even accidental DBA) a lot easier.
13. Backup Compression: Even though it is a new feature in SQL Server 2008, it has really helped companies to upgrade to the new version and speeding a lot (if not all) of the backup operations.
14. Data Encryption: SQL Server 2008 provides a lot of encryption options to encrypt data and code. Transparent Data Encryption has really safe guarded some of the crucial data movement operations our company.
Winner #2 SAJID
First upon, thanks for bringing this questions. I had heard lots of arguments comparing one RDBMS with another and believe me the debate never ends.
What we can think is how one RDBMS better than other – one thing must be remember; what you think is good, could be bad per other opinion.
I like SQL Server because of its SIMPLICITY. I learned SQL commands over Oracle (ah! it was too long that I used oracle and never touched it again after being FRIENDLY with SQL :) ).
I like following attributes of SQL Server hence I loved this one… and as I am trying to deep dive into technology I am being passionate lover… :)
1. First thing I liked is as said its SIMPLICITY.
2. Easy Availability– one don’t have to pay huge bucks to make SQL Available.. he can use Express edition available free.
3. Uncomplicated installation process – follows the same standard as of other MS Product like MS-Office etc… that no one need special knowledge of installation process to get ready to use SQL.
4. Can be install on Average system – like few other RDMS, SQL do not have special hardware requirement. so one can be benefited without having his/her system upgraded.
5. User friendly UI. again abide to MS standard for all other application so anyone feel friendly on first visit.
6. Easy navigation through common shortcuts and tool box. I don’t have to remember multiple keys to navigate.. what works in MS-Office / VS etc.. almost works in SQL as well.
7. BOL – help documentation is easily available and more friendly to browse to get the correct help.
8. Perfect match for all level of organizations… small firms to big enterprise to data store.
9. Perfect suite of application – good clubbing and packaging of Database engine, Agent Service, Notification Service, Reporting Service, Analysis Service, Integration Service.
10. Support for Multi- Instance and side by side installation of multiple versions.
11. Enhanced Security
12. Enhanced Optimizer
13. availability for various technologies to support high availability like Log Shipping, Replication, Clustering, Mirroring etc..
14. Easy to tune up, one can easily tune up the performance with help of wizards and additional tool like Profiler etc litle knowledge.
15. Advancement in the technology.. like SQL Azure, CLR integration, DAC, Intellisense (though I didnt like current intellisense but it helps often).
16. Broader community – I like the SQL community, in Fact I have sharpened my skill through this community.. where you can easily catch up with SQL MVP or MS SQL Team. I love dedication you guys shown up in communities. I believe that if someone is in crisis, this community will never let him get down with SQL.
17. non ANSI functions in SQL are similar to other programming languages hence feels comfortable and don’t have to dig more to find the right function that is equivalent in something like in .net.
ah… I never thought I can praise SQL Server in these many ways, still there are lots of things that are poping up in my mind.. like Query Plan and its help and documentation to understand one… like files and file groups are utilized. I remember having problem when one dont know where does the RDBMS technology keeps the data file, but that never happen with SQL… how friendly are the extended procedures and DMO’s…Centralized Server management, Data collection, Resource Governor.. Oh No!!again I found myself in a state of praising each feature delivered by SQL.
Wrapping up as time to be with someone special – SQL Server.
Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)
15 Comments. Leave new
Licensing is simple? I think this is complicated https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-2016
Licensing of Interbase, DB2, PostgreSQL, etc. is many times simpler.. and usually less expensive also.
As always, “the best RDBMS” depends on what you want to do with it. Absolutely, SQL Server is the best ever if you are integrating with other MS products.
At my office, SQL Server is “the” tool without question. On my hobby projects at home, I don’t go anywhere near it.
R.O.F.L.
Geeze kids today, seems you wouldn’t recognize a decent rdbms and hosting solution if it hit you over the head, which in fact, if you knew how to use google and actually evaluate the alternatives, it actually does.
Nice Microsoft’s marketing.
Unfortunately, as the majority of them – false.
Would you please explain a bit more?
This sounds like something from a Microsoft Marketing person. Things like: “SSMS is the best” don’t sound very professional. I always preferred Allroundautomations PL/SQL Developers, its context menus are great, a nicely working debugger and a lot more.. That’s a personal opinion!
User friendly interface: You might like it, but even I who work almost 100% on Windows still likes tools with configuration files. For a professional who works every day with the system, a text file can be a lot more efficient. I can easily copy the file before I make some changes. I can grep after a value, I can add a single line in my documentation and every admin will understand what I mean. If there’s some shell like bash I can even add a single line you can copy&paste to activate a certain feature. An old fashioned console can be very fast and easy to use, it depends on what you do and it depends on your background.
To me simplicity is if I can execute a simple command instead of having to click around a graphical user interface. But I get that someone doesn’t like that approach. It depends!
Your statements about licensing is rather hard to understand. I actually never understood why there are people working at Microsoft called “Senior License Evangelist”…
SQL Server is definitely a great product but it’s definitely not the best product for everything. A small database like SQLite does have a lot of advantages over SQL Server. And yes, I know there’s SQL Server Express.
If you’re comparing products don’t just write “It’s better”. Do an actual comparison and don’t forget that people have different opinions!
Sorry, but this doesn’t sound serious.
1. Easy integration with Microsoft Operating systems.
Hurray. Can we run in on Linux, if our entire infrastructure (application servers, search engine, messaging, etc..) are on Linux – no. How great?
2. East integration with world’s most common database: Spreadsheet, Microsoft excel in particular and power pivot has significantly enhanced its value.
Import a csv is a feature of every database, and the data from each spreadsheet can be expported to csv.
5. Integrated Security (windows authentication): This definitely help streamline server access based on Active directory policies and groups.
See point 1.
9. SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS): As compare to other RDMS systems tools, SSMS is the best tool for a developer or a DBA.
Eh, what? I bet they(you) haven’t tried Navicat. Or any other such tool for that matter.
Everything else, like enhanced optimizer, replication, disaster recovery, etc., etc. are available in all RDBMS. And, btw “RDBMS application” sounds a bit odd to my ears — “[..] system application”.
Oh, I just want to mention something – LIMIT everywhere, TOP in MSSQL.
Hahaha, thanks for the fun. Now, I have go back to something serious. bye.
This article is missing facts and thus can’t be taken seriously. Take this sentence: “Perfect match for all level of organizations… small firms to big enterprise to data store.” Not a tiny bit related to MSSQL, it could be stated equally for all the other vendors. Same with most of the arguments.
Please take the time to gather some facts and create an objective list, this is just plain subjective reasoning.
[commented edited and sent email, will post comment after receiving response]
I like your blog more and more each time I read articles on it. It is full of really useful articles/advices. But this article may seem a bit weak.. I don’t know if the subject is to blame (users of ms sql server tell why this tool is the best) or the winners’ answers tone (they sound a bit like kids’ essays: my father is the strongest, my mom is the cutest… no objective evidence to most arguments).. it is by essence biased.
I’m looking forward to reading your great posts nonetheless !
Cheers.
BTW I’m a sql server user/fan myself.
In this part of the exercise you are required to write SQL queries. Your solutions will be graded based on its correctness, as well as on its simplicity.
1. You are given the following relation definitions which describe the world of Sports:
Sportsman (Sid, Sname, Sage, Scountry)
Coach (Cid, Cname, Cage, Ccountry)
Coaches (Cid, Sid, salary)
All id’s age and salaries are of type number, and the rest of the attributes are of type varchar2 (30). A sportsman may have 0 or more coaches, a coach may have 0 or more sportsmen. A sportsman cannot coach himself. Age and salaries are positive. All pairs of (Cid, Sid) must exist in Sportsman and Coach, respectively.
Note: Assume and take appropriate data according to the queries given. Insert at least 6 tuples for each relation in the database.
Formulate the following queries in SQL:
a) Find the names of all sports man whose names begin with the letter ‘S’, ends with the letter ‘e’, and the letter ‘m’ appears in their name.
b) Find the names of sportsmen who are from India and over the age of 23, and have a coach (at least one).
c) Find the names of all coaches who coach a sportsman from their own country and they are not the oldest coaches.
d) Find the names of coaches from Italy who coach more than 2 sportsmen.
e) Find the coaches who do not train a French sportsman.
f) Find the coaches who train a sportsman who is not Indian.
i am given this question as assignment if you have the solution can you mail me. my mail-id
Can u give me the soln anu?
Q: Why SQL Server is better than any other RDBMS application?
A: (1) Tight integration with Visual Studio. Made for each other.
(2) Intelli-Sense enabled GUI to work with. Sorry, I mean to say they were the first to start Intelli-Sense.
(3) Rich community. Microsoft is expert in marketing. Your head won’t stuck when serious issue arises. You can easily find a trouble-shooter next door.
(4) Easy to scale from a desktop database to a server database. Many people use it on a single PC.
(5) No complexity and virtually doesn’t require a dedicated DBA in most cases.
You are given the following relation definitions which describe the world of Sports:
Sportsman (Sid, Sname, Sage, Scountry)
Coach (Cid, Cname, Cage, Ccountry)
Coaches (Cid, Sid, salary)
All id’s age and salaries are of type number and the rest of the attributes are of type varchar2 (30). A sportsman may have 0 or more coaches, a coach may have 0 or more sportsmen. A sportsman cannot coach himself. Age and salaries are positive. All pairs of (Cid, Sid) must exist in Sportsman and Coach respectively
a) Find the names of all sportsman whose name begin with the letter ‘S’, ends with the letter ‘e’, and the letter ‘m’ appears in their name
‘
b) Find the names of sportsmen who are from India and over the age of 23 and have a coach (at least one)
c) Find the names of all coaches who coach a sportsman from their own country and they are not the oldest coaches
d) Find the names of coaches from Italy who coach more than 2 sportsmen
e) Find the coaches who do not train a French sportsman
f) Find the coaches who train a sportsman who is not Indian
Can you please send me the answer for this…