We performed a comparison between MYSQL and SQL Server based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: SQL Server comes out ahead in this comparison because it is less demanding on resources and can more easily be integrated with other solutions. Some users feel that MySQL requires more maintenance and can be a bit buggy and less stable than SQL Server.
"The one interesting thing about this product is that it is open source. It comes from an open source product. MySQL has been positioned as open source, but it also provides support."
"The solution is free to use, which is its most valuable aspect."
"It is easy to use. It is simple to implement, which makes it suitable for our projects because we have deadlines. MySQL is also open-source, which is another plus point."
"A lot of the software components have been trialed and tested for often more than 10 years."
"The feature I found most valuable is activity performance."
"MySQL's clustering features are very strong, and you can automate scripting, so that helps. We wrote a Terraform script and ran it."
"We use it as a data store and from that perspective, we get everything we need."
"It is very easy to install and has all basic database features."
"Very easy to use, and it's very democratic in the enterprise."
"The solution seems to be pretty flexible."
"It's great that the database engine is always on."
"We have found the solution valuable because we are able to easily create a query, shrink, backup, and make new tables."
"The product's initial setup phase was simple."
"It is fairly easy to work with. I like the high-availability options, like mirroring for example, and the high-availability groups."
"I have found that SQL Server works very well in the Microsoft Dynamics environment."
"I find query optimization to be highly valuable for data management. Additionally, drag-and-drop query creation greatly facilitates data management tasks."
"The workbench could be improved. In particular, error messages can be improved, which are horrific and completely unhelpful. I'd like to see improved parsing of errors. When you write SQL and it crashes, it usually is something completely irrelevant and not helpful. I've started to use GPT 3.5 for finding out how to do things. I got to do something a bit different, and that I found to be very useful. If there was some way to tie it into one of the new AI tools, that would probably be a good idea."
"The documentation is pretty weak and should be improved."
"I would like to improve the solution’s pricing for licenses."
"The technical support should be more knowledgeable and available worldwide."
"The performance, stability, and security are areas with shortcomings in MySQL, where improvements are required."
"Sometimes, not because the version is not the latest version, there are some issues with it. Sometimes there's an issue with the server which creates issues with it."
"I find the Microsoft solution a bit better. But mostly in terms of the UI layout, I would say. I just find it a little bit more efficient."
"The GUI interface probably can be improved. Let us say I want to see the relationships in the database. In the query analyzer, I would like to go and drop the tables and create relationships between the tables. I haven't found a feature like that in MySQL. It was a shortcoming even in SQL Server. MySQL can have more performance monitoring tools. I know Google has these tools, but within MySQL, there are not that many tools to monitor things like performance and database locking. They might be in there, and I might not be familiar enough to know where they are. I am a pretty new user of MySQL."
"The agility of the non-SQL-based features is relevant on the market."
"CAL licenses should cost less. Microsoft usually prices high for client access licenses. Server plus user client access license (CAL) licensing requires a separate Server license for each server on which the software is installed, plus a user CAL for each user accessing the server."
"As a software developer, it can be hard to do something in Oracle that is SQL Server specific, and vice-versa, sometimes."
"I would like the SQL Server to be able to provide cloud support. We use the solution with a Korean provider supporting only MySQL rather than Microsoft SQL Server, which would be preferable and cheaper. This would prevent us from having to pay for troubleshooting and hosting the server."
"I would like to see the performance improved. Migrating should be easier and the scalability needs improvement."
"They have too many licensing options. They may want to simplify its licensing and bring it down to two, three, or four categories from ten to fifteen categories. Having so many different licensing options makes it difficult to decide which one to choose from. They can club things together. This is an area where they can make things easier for customers."
"The solution could be better when it comes to security."
"The way to make cursors and manage raw data in rows can be improved. Currently, the way to construct or build these cursors is very hard, and you can waste memory. You need a highly skilled person to make it more efficient. It can also have support for Cubes, which is the organization of data in different dimensions by using MDX languages."
MySQL is ranked 4th in Relational Databases Tools with 142 reviews while SQL Server is ranked 1st in Relational Databases Tools with 260 reviews. MySQL is rated 8.2, while SQL Server is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of MySQL writes "Good beginner base but it should have better support for backups". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SQL Server writes "Easy to use and provides good speed and data recovery". MySQL is most compared with Firebird SQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Teradata and Oracle Database, whereas SQL Server is most compared with MariaDB, SAP HANA, Oracle Database, LocalDB and Vertica. See our MySQL vs. SQL Server report.
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