I am an equal opportunity consumer of database technology - something we all should be (e.g. use the right tool for the job when appropriate). I have used MANY different databases, open source and commercial, and there are better ones and worse ones across the spectrum. I think it is naive to criticize this move in any way - it is giving more choice so should be supported.
That said, SQL Server has a low barrier to entry, a very good implementation of the SQL language, an advanced optimizer, strong storage engine, management tools and a lot of nice BI features. Although you don't hear about it much, SQL Server also has Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) which is their MPP database - ironically which used to be built using Ingres and Java of all things.
In my experience, SQL Server <-> PostgreSQL is the closest commercial to open source comparison (core database engine-wise) I can think of. This makes sense when you consider - both of them started as Ingres! Of course, Postgres and SQL Server have totally different user experiences (database management, tooling, etc.) and many different features.
I'm a big fan of SQL Server but the main thing that hurts it is the cost. Licensing our two servers today would cost a quarter of a million dollars. The OS cost is a rounding error. If I'm paying that much money for SQL Server I don't think I'd choose the Linux version for at least another 5 years from now. It needs to prove itself and there's almost no benefit to offset the risk.
It will significantly reduce the licensing implications of using SQL Server for a small project. I know people who use MSSQL in their day job but postgres/other for personal projects and one of the reasons is needing to license Windows if a personal project becomes public and needs hosting. This way a small project can use SQL Server Express on Linux just as cost free as progres (or mysql if you must) on Linux.
The choice of OS will no longer dictates the choice of DB, that decision can be entirely made on the needs of the project and its target users.
Small projects using Express edition may grow into larger ones needed standard/enterprise features, and people exposed to SQL Server through projects using it on Linux are less likely to dismiss ti later because the know postgres/other only. I'm not sure how much we'll see brand new larger projects use SQL Server on Linux any time soon though, but I imagine "get them in at the ground floor and create familiarity as early as possible" is the intention here much like cheap educational licensing for Windows, Office, & full VS and the availability of VS Express.
Conversations I had with some senior SQL server team members in the last two years suggested they were ready for no reboot patching but were limited by the OS and felt it was holding them back. If it wasn't for Windows, SQL server uptime would be much better (was the implication)
I'm looking forward to trialing it.
Well, I might KEEP my SQL Server, but switch from Windows to Linux as the host OS - to save $$ on licensing and hardware.
It's naive to support it just because of the assumption that more choice must be good.
On the contrary the past few years on Windows have been full of data corruption bugs in SQL 2012 and 2014; and while 2016 looks amazing with new features Microsoft has continued to push ahead instead of just - you know - fixing the fucking bugs we all keep reporting and upvoting on Connect and getting ignored.
More choice is IMHO not a good thing. It's a bad thing. In the same way people who "multi task" are more often than not churning out shit work and running on luck - I'd prefer Microsoft focus on what they know best.
There are a few obvious cases which don't work (e.g. scalar UDFs aren't inlined - always use table UDFs), but the performance battle Oracle and Microsoft had circa 2000 really shows. The vast majority of the time you can code your intent and the query optimizer will simply do the right thing.
The main reason I would choose SQL over any of the competition is DataDude/VSSQL. We started using it where I work (~5100 schema objects) and it's revolutionary. T-SQL becomes a first-class language in Visual Studio:
- Full editor integration: intellisense and errors as you type.
- Build system: build (including static analysis) and deploy from Visual Studio. MSBuild-based integration for CI.
- Schema delta: you write/update your schema as though you are writing it for the first time and, as part of the build, the ALTER script will be generated for you. You rarely have to write migration scripts yourself (I've only had to when migrating data across columns/tables).
I have been thinking about solving this for PostgreSQL because I'm now completely unable to work without it - I just wish I had the time. Any other form of SQL development now feels like VBScript development in Notepad.
MS SQL is missing some very basic SQL functionality.
It sounds like you are talking about the XML conversion method for concatenating groups. There is one other way around it using custom .NET CLR functions, but it is definitely cumbersome as well.
I've read that SQL Server code was originally based on Sybase code they licensed. Not sure.
Sybase is not in anyway related to Ingres that I know of other than the fact that Bob Epstein and Mike Stonebraker worked on the Ingres project at Cal. Sybase in fact was considerably different from Ingres in many ways such as use of SQL instead of QUEL, network access to the SQL Server, and specialized features like stored procedures. The Sybase founders did not come directly from Cal or even Ingres but rather from Britton Lee.
Can you store / query JSON-like data in SQL server? I'd like to be able to store a structured object and query a keypath.
http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2012/04/27/sql-server-introduct...
I've built a Rails app atop a large legacy SQL Server, and I really haven't run into anything that wouldn't run. (aside from `rails db`)
Or was the RDS implementation part of how MS figured out how to release this??
The big difference with RDS is that you don't get the full gambit of clustering capabilities that SQL server supports. This is mainly due to the fact they don't have a shared storage model that SQL cluster failover requires.
If you aren't locked into their eco-system stay clear away from it. Otherwise you will regret it, as the licensing costs are very expensive and per CPU core (think Oracle). Better switch to MySQL or Postgres or Lucene, etc.
For example, OLAP, distributed transactions, cluster scalability and so on.
SqlServer has always been the best performing and least troublesome database in terms of weird edge cases, backup, restoration, and (especially!) performing expensive SELECTS on databases that have grown into the 100's of Gigabytes in size.
Based on my experience, for all the (often deserved) hate on M$, SqlServer is really a shining star.
That being said, I am a little scared to support SqlServer on Linux, as I imagine it will have to be different in quite some potentially fundamental ways to work on Linux - I'd love to hear if anyone has opinions on that aspect.
That said, I think that this will probably come with a large amount of caveats, for instance, I wouldn't be surprised if when it launches it's just the core SQL engine and not the extra pieces (SSIS,SSAS,SSRS,MDS, et cetera).
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/slavao/archive/2005/02/05/367816.asp...
What is the reason for this?
"SQL Server on Linux" really means "More developers will be able to offer compatibility with SQL Server" - those who use Mac OS X and Linux as a primary environment.
My software supports PgSQL, MySQL, H2 and Oracle because they can run on my Macbook, or at least in a Linux VM. I explicitly exclude MS SQL because I'm not able to install MS SQL Server to test (at least not with a legal license). It's the same for continuous testing: It's easy to launch a Linux VM on a VPS, it's much less easy to launch and execute automated tests on a Windows machine.
"The spokesperson also acknowledged that Microsoft won't be bringing all of the same capabilities in SQL Server 2016 to Linux; it will be just the "core relational database capabilities."
As somewhat expected this will be a limited release catering mostly to cloud customers (Azure in particular) - who knows down the road they will port all features to Linux including the UI management tools but I would be surprised if they don't keep the niche features Windows-only.
Welcome announcement anyway - having a supported mainstream DB other than Oracle on Linux is a good thing.
For some definition of niche, which in this case may very well include "enterprise class features" such as replication...
This is a way for MS to increase exposure and draw people into their ecosystem (at least for a part of their infrastructure) in an increasingly OS agnostic world. I don't think it makes sense for them to cannibalize their current revenue sources to do so, and a part of that is requiring expensive Windows Server licenses for high-end MSSQL features.
"We are bringing the core relational database capabilities to preview today, and are targeting availability in mid-2017."
so you will have the core capabilities in 2016, but by mis 2017 i am expecting the full thing
I obviously have no idea what went into the decision, but it felt like it was an attempt to get people committed to the product then strong arm them to Windows.
Even today, for mainstream products like Excel, they still hold back key features from a major platform like OS X. (E.g., https://support.office.com/en-GB/article/Compare-Excel-2016-...)
They have another decade worth of good behaviour owed before I'm willing to consider giving them the benefit of the doubt. But that's me.
I don't think "hold back" is the right term. It's my understanding they share some code between the platforms but for a lot of the GUI they do not so it's expected many of the OS X features are simply not done / lower priority than other features.
don't have much experience with postgres, but my money is still on mssql
That's one hell of a benchmark, up there with "eating paste is better than being on fire" and "missing a hand is better than missing a head".
> don't have much experience with postgres, but my money is still on mssql
Obviously, since postgres is FOSS.
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2mhpwp/postgre...
MySQL is hardly a relational database, it's not quite the benchmark you're looking for.
Well, gosh. I'm convinced.
(Full disclosure: I abhor MySQL. But if you're paying attention, you'll notice that my position is a statement of opinion, while yours is a statement of "fact". The reality is, every RDBMS has strengths and weaknesses, and should be evaluated for their applicability to a given project on a case-by-case basis — at which point, I'm sure, you'll conclude that PostgreSQL is the best choice, anyway.) ;)
* A list of advantages vs mysql? (Bonus if you can admit faults of MSSQL as well) * Some blogs or articles perchance? * Performance metrics or % of SQL standard it implements vs the accused?
I'm genuinely curious if it is good but one half-screamed pledge is hardly trustworthy.
PostGreSQL kicks both of them into the trash.
Keep in mind that Microsoft sells tech support to companies with a special hotline they can call and get answers and support for enterprise level software. Porting SQL Server to Linux means more copies of SQL Server being used out there and more tech support phone calls that companies pay for.
With Office 2000 there was the MSDE on the CD-ROM that had a developer version of SQL Server that could run on Windows 2000 Pro to test out databases without using Windows Server. It was limited in number of connections and other things.
And also a few months ago they posted to the Django developers mailing list about developing MSSQL as a first-class database for Django: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/django-developers/Fb...
It seems pushing MSSQL for Linux is the next step.
Meanwhile, I hope they can get things running ported to FreeBSD, since that's what I use for the server.
I'm a 20-year Linux fan, but my main project right now is running on SQL Server in Azure. I've got a side project running to convert it to Rails using the tiny_tds driver, but I'll wait for a couple/few years and see how this REALLY works out.
The more Microsoft tries to brand themselves as "loving Linux," the more I'm getting suspicious. If they really want to wear that crown, then they need to release Office for Linux, in DPKG and RPM formats. The product matters a whole lot less these days, in this cloud-based, app-driven world, but that's the ONE thing that would actually prove it to me.
"If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won." -Linus Torvalds
Now I'm finished.
In other words: MS isn't just trying to acquire new users, it tries to keep existing ones.
I'm really happy to see this.
I'm not saying MSSql isn't really nice. I'm just saying I found the timing of reading your comment amusing.
Otherwise I am pretty happy with the product.
But it means having a separate windows-server team set up to handle builds and all that. The crappy thing is that the rest of IT uses Linux or Unix based OSs for their software, so Cygwin ends up getting installed on most Win Servers to open them up to the NFS shares that drive most of the data movement. I could see this being pretty huge to be able to migrate the various SQL server versions and Win OS versions over to Linux and ditch the need for dual environments while still supporting a RDBMS that most of the business is comfortable using and has tons of legacy data and apps built against them.
But.. yea I agree. If you just need a database, drop Postgres on a linux box and role. It's free and there is a huge community. If you've got the money and need something managed for you with support built in and lots of horsepower then go with something like Teradata. SQL Server feels like the Sears/k-mart of RDBMS. I'll just go to Walmart, thank you very much.
For a non-american, what's the difference between Sears/k-mart and Walmart?
I dearly hope the SmartOS and FreeBSD folks can make it work on their respective platforms.
If that happens then I'm packing up and heading for the hills, this world is done for.
On the other hand, at my current job I've been in charge of some search tech that's Windows only and being the lone Windows user has been a bit painful. We liked the results it gave us but recently developed our own algorithms on top of ElasticSearch so we didn't have to deal with Windows anymore. The Dev work to switch was more than the cost saved on the license for the old software, so this wasn't a case of open source saving is money on the solution implementation. We really just didn't want to focus on Windows Dev ops. I think this is the concern the SQL Server team had and why they're supporting Linux, especially in Microsoft's increasingly Azure focused world.
My income depends on SS but it saddens me when I think of how much is spent on it by applications which could so easily run on something that is free.
Basically, http://yourdatafitsinram.com/
Sybase runs happily on Unix, Linux or Windows.
Well, that's 23 years ago...
But even at mssql V7[0], most of the systems had internal rewrites that made them different than Sybase.
[0] - https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/euanga/2006/01/19/sql-mythb...
As an aside, back in the early 2000s I was using the free version of Sybase ASE on Linux for webapps. It was great; painless to run and manage, and fast. Of course, MSSQL blew it out of the water even back then.
I can't call a stored procedure from a select query? Ok, write a user-defined wrapper function. Oh wait, I can't call a stored procedure from there either. Now I know why the consultants use a VBA script in Excel to load data... it's actually the easiest way, ridiculously convoluted as it is, if your logic is implemented as stored procedures.
I remember the first time I wrote a stored procedure in PostgreSQL. It was the point at which I decided I would never willingly choose MSSQL for a project again. If you write a lot of stored procedures / TSQL in MS SQL Server, do yourself a favor and check out how it is done in PostgreSQL. It's an order of magnitude simpler and saner.
There are a lot of other bits, such as Integrated Security Security, Windows Perf Counters, Windows Event Log, that are probably stripped out.
But I also suspect that that the Linux implementation is based on the implementation that they use for Azure SQL Databases.
The Natural Keyboards [0] have been getting less and less durable as the years go by. My first one lasted for ~five years. My second, two or three. My third is less than a year old and already suffering from intermittent failure to register keypresses, as well as surprisingly rapid breakdown of the faux leather material that covers the bottom portion of the keyboard. (The faux leather breakdown is a first for me... all the other keyboards suffered mechanical failure long before I saw any sort of wear on the bottom portion material.)
[0] Specifically, the MSFT Natural Ergonomic Keyboard X000 models that have the stupid, useless zoom slider.
But the baseball mouse really hurts my hand; and I tried using it for a month before giving up.
I'm quite impressed by the possibility of running SQL Server on Linux; as a T-SQL developer immediately out of university, I have come to appreciate its speed and efficiency. It's not perfect and it does have its annoying quirks, but in general it's quite a sturdy RDBMS. MySQL has demonstrated some much more WTF-y quirks (try inserting a varchar into an int column!) and there are places I prefer T-SQL syntax (e.g. temp tables). Management tools don't really factor into it, you can get third-party tools that support intellisense etc. on different RDBMSs. In short, I would have few reservations about using SQL Server for my own projects (since I run exclusively Linux at home).
Licensing is another story though; I dread to think how much it'll cost, but this is a pretty amazing step in the right direction, adding to a recent history of such steps, for Microsoft.
NOTE: This type of thing is what made me hate Microsoft for so long, and even today I find it difficult to recommend them as a solution provider for anything, on any platform. So, while I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, I'll continue working to move everything I can, including databases, to another platform.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/intellectualproperty/t...
There is a lot of software that targets a limited subset of databases due to SQL incompatibilities/features and sometimes that is a subset of one. Getting some of those backends on Linux would be nice for people who have concentrated on unix/linux skills to the detriment of their Windows knowledge.
This eats Windows OS sales to some extent but I am sure they can make it up with database licenses and market share if they take the product seriously.
But there are often times when you just don't have a choice. Sometimes it's SQL Server or bust, and you have to work with it. Hell, sometimes, it's MySQL, and you don't have a choice.
I don't hate it at all. I wish it had more of the PL parts of PL/SQL because that would make my life sometimes easier.
I had to implement some very crazy/stupid statistical procedures with SQL Server. It kind of sucked in ways that would have been a lot better in Postgres.
Lots and lots of fun with dynamic SQL where you're stuffing SQL into variables and interpolating column names from variables into those strings.
It was awful. But it worked.
If SQL Server would bring in even some of the PL features of Postgres or Oracle, I would use in a heartbeat.
The tooling that MS provides for SQL Server is second to none. I love me some open source, but the tooling we have available for Postgres and MySQL is just absolute crap compared to SSMS.
BTW if you reply to this comment with a "Microsoft smackdown" comment then your comment is not very interesting.
I'm interested to hear some thoughtful replies, not Linux fanboy pile-on and jeering.
Come deployment time, they decide to deploy on Windows to minimize unnecessary differences with their dev stack and there are better deployment tools for MSSQL on Windows than on Linux.
I don't think Microsoft is trying to stop people from using Windows as a back-end server (especially when you look at efforts like Windows servers as Docker container farms), more that they are trying to even further lower the barriers to entry that a small "garage" company can spin up something like SQL Server. Maybe as that company grows past the "cheapest VPS on the market" phase they look to running their own Windows servers or (I presume, better yet to Microsoft) let Azure manage SQL Servers for them...
That said, they'd still have to come up with a much cheaper license for SQL Server to entice that "cheapest VPS on the market" crowd, but certainly this appears a step in that direction.
Is it actually used by a meaningful amount of people and businesses?
Not sure about the accuracy of my prediction, but I'll bet I'm closer to right than wrong by that time.
I wonder if this is the beginning of a similar change in the industry.
Can't wait to try this one, a Redis-like service with all the consistency of a mature SQL database (in theory at least).
Don't get me wrong, I've being deploying Redis in production and I'm love with it, but it's nice to have an alternative with referential integrity not to mention the "isomorphic" effect (you'll be able to switch from non-volatile to volatile persistence without the wizardry required by the typical in-memory databases).
How great would it be to have first-class sql-server-management-studio on your Mac/Linux desktop?
I wonder if SqlExpress is going to be available on Linux too?
Only cost conscious developers care about running db server on the same machine as application server to keep costs low. Such people wont buy SQL Server at all for the cost related reasons.
Non cost conscious developers can always run SQL Server on a separate Windows machine while keeping their application servers on Linux.
Except Microsoft intends to make SQL Server free and make it replace Mysql among small developers and later help them buy SQL Server instances in cloud and make money.
From memory I remember when they "acquired" the source from Sybase and one of the selling points was that they could strip out all the multi-platform complexity from the source code. Being windows-only meant it was simpler, less complex code, faster and less buggy.
It also confuses my view of what MS has been doing. Maybe Azure is more important than Windows now? Its going to be kinda weird to see SQL Server on Linux in Azure.
Their bet evidently is they can make more money selling SQL Server without Windows than with it.
So you don't think that, maybe-just-maybe, it's gotten a little easier to write cross-platform code in the last twenty-three years?
If you're interested in using docker+.NetCore+EF a "proper" database was the only piece missing.
It's not completely self-serving. Back when magazines were made of paper, "DBMS Faceoff!" articles sold a lot of copy, and generated more heat than light. A DBMS is a complex beast, enough so that it's impossible to say if X is faster than Y for all workloads.
(I can't believe I'm actually saying that.)
would I use it for my own project's? no.
would I use it for some random software that requires mssql? yes.
MS is extending the olive branch in so many ways, and we in the open source community can learn to forgive. Still, it will be hard to get over the mutual hostility from decades past.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trudy-bourgeois/what-george-wa...
What would be the memory usage difference?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F4qzPbcFiA
With that out of the way, I wonder if they will port their other software like Mcrosoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Office, various games, etcetera.
PostgreSQL for me thanks.
Wait I remember sun one asp server .
Please tell me this isn't sql server written in c# using mono !
We already have fairly superior commercial solution, like Informix Dynamic Server family, which is superior in everything, except compatibility with MS, that lost "competition" (to meme-based popularity) to crap like MySQL or bloatware like Oracle.
This is, again, good publicity and excellent PR action, but my bet is that performance and especially stability will be poor, like it is with .Net port or Skype port. To bring a server to the market requires expertise with target platform which very few UNIX shops has.
Open sourcing IDS, which has remarkable technology inside, which is partially related to Postgres, would be a much better move.)
Hacker news is a startup/technology oriented news aggregator with a comments section.
Not a den of criminals. (depending on your views about capitalism i suppose)
Thanks, Scott ` This is why there is a comma in grammar. `me Satya Nadella, X and Y` is different from `me, Satya Nadella, X and Y`
MS SQL relies heavily on Windows OS API. How are they going to pull this off? With some kind of VM layer running under linux with a stripped down Window OS which will run MS SQL?
MS Should announce that they are going to fork a version of Linux with their brand MS-Linux. Hell - If they port every piece of software over to Linux, they would rule the world & back-end server market.
Any way. Good luck!
