We compared SQL Server and Amazon Aurora based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
In summary, SQL Server is praised for its robustness, reliability, security, and user-friendly interface, with reasonable pricing and satisfactory ROI. On the other hand, Amazon Aurora stands out for its scalability, performance, and user-friendly interface, with varying user experiences in terms of pricing and setup. Users highlight the need for enhancements in both products, such as performance optimization and improved usability.
Features: SQL Server stands out for its robustness, reliable handling of large data, seamless integration with Microsoft products, comprehensive security measures, and user-friendly graphical interface. In comparison, Amazon Aurora excels in seamless scalability, easy-to-use interface, and impressive speed, allowing for efficient and smooth operations.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for SQL Server has been praised as straightforward and efficient, with flexible licensing options. In contrast, the experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Amazon Aurora is more varied. While some find the pricing competitive and appreciate the lack of upfront setup costs, others find the licensing terms complicated. Individual perspectives and requirements play a significant role in determining the experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing., SQL Server offers significant improvements in efficiency, data management, and cost savings, with seamless integration, robust security, and superior performance. On the other hand, Amazon Aurora provides a valuable ROI for its users.
Room for Improvement: The SQL Server product could benefit from improvements in usability, performance optimization, compatibility with other platforms, handling of complex queries, security features, and efficient handling of large datasets. On the other hand, Amazon Aurora could improve in terms of performance, scalability, backup and restoration processes, user interface usability, and pricing structure.
Deployment and customer support: The reviews indicate that the time required for establishing a new tech solution with SQL Server can range from a week to three months, with deployment and setup phases possibly being separate. The feedback for Amazon Aurora also varies, with deployment taking anywhere from a week to three months, and setup being completed in the same timeframe or an additional week. Considering the context is essential for understanding the duration of these phases., Customers have praised the reliability and efficiency of SQL Server's customer service, while Amazon Aurora's support team has been commended for their prompt assistance and knowledge. Differences lie in specific areas of support provided.
The summary above is based on 42 interviews we conducted recently with SQL Server and Amazon Aurora users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The solution’s scalability is good since we don’t need to take a maintenance window during unpredictable workloads. I like the solution’s behind-the-scenes happenings. It is a great feature."
"We had better control over the parameters that we could tweak in terms of intermediate storage and better indexing capabilities."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to do multiple-read and single-write. These are the kinds of features that we were interested in, and Aurora takes care of that natively."
"The provision of custom read and write endpoints eliminates the need for managing a separate proxy load balancer."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon Aurora is SQL standardization, it doesn't have its own syntax which is good. It has a lot of hands-off self-management type of activities, such as log rolling and auto-scaling."
"The most valuable feature is that the maintainability is offloaded to the service provider. I don't have to maintain a database or do any administrative tasks, which comes in handy."
"Aurora's compatibility with MySQL or PostgreSQL benefited our database management. The migration from on-premise MySQL to Aurora was similar, so we didn't need to change our source code."
"The installation was straightforward. We did not have a large installation and it took a couple of weeks to complete."
"The product can scale if a company needs it to."
"Features like autoscaling, business continuity, and security are beneficial. The tool's compatibility with almost all of the enterprise-class applications is also beneficial for users."
"SQL Server is an inexpensive solution. I recommend it if the project isn't sensitive. SQL is similar to Oracle and integrates well with tools in the cloud environment. The difference is that Oracle is for data solutions where there is replication and moderation."
"It's a good learning environment, it's easy enough to learn and understand. Anybody that picks up the language early on will be able to develop in it."
"The fact that SQL Server fully integrates within the entire Microsoft ecosystem is a plus."
"The most valuable features for database management in SQL Server are SQL Server Management Studio and Visual Studio Code with its administration capabilities."
"This solution has proven stability and operational power."
"It would have been helpful if they had provided some benchmarking numbers."
"There is improvement needed to have more developer focus. Additionally, it would be helpful to have a stand-alone solution outside of Amazon. Amazon has a tendency to favor developing web-based clients, which may not always provide the fastest or most responsive solution as desired."
"It is a bit costly. The features are quite good, and I wouldn't say it requires any technical improvements. But from a cost perspective, some clients wouldn't go for Aurora because of that."
"The pricing could improve. It should be reduced."
"I would like to see more AI-related features in future releases."
"The product's distributed query process for MySQL needs improvement."
"I would like to see performance insights on the database based on the queries. Currently, we use SolarWinds as the monitoring tool. I would like to leverage SolarWinds’ performance insights in AWS services. SolarWinds gives larger insights when we run performance issues."
"Their datatypes need improvement."
"The treatment of database storage could be improved."
"They need to improve their support. It should be faster."
"The stored procedure integration with our development could be better. Things are always changing very fast at Microsoft, and it takes a lot of resources to get on top of it. We're struggling with version control. In terms of new features, we don't have any feature requests. We are not focusing on the database."
"Microsoft support is an issue unto itself."
"There should be more tools and documentation for tuning the performance of Microsoft SQL Server. It would be nice to have more tools for tuning because currently, all the tuning that we have to do with our databases is almost manual. We have to read a bunch of knowledge base articles, and this information should be better documented. Its free text search should also be improved. It is quite important for us. Currently, we're developing our own free text search because of the lacking flexibility in Microsoft SQL Server. Therefore, we're kind of using elastic search and making different implementations in order to reach our targets. Using just the native free text search of Microsoft SQL Server is not enough for us. It should have more flexible features as compared to the current version."
"You do need to have technical knowledge in order to install the solution. It's not something a layperson can do."
"The interface of the tool has certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required."
Amazon Aurora is ranked 11th in Relational Databases Tools with 7 reviews while SQL Server is ranked 1st in Relational Databases Tools with 260 reviews. Amazon Aurora is rated 7.8, while SQL Server is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Amazon Aurora writes "Easy-to-manage platform with a valuable auto-scaling feature ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SQL Server writes "Easy to use and provides good speed and data recovery". Amazon Aurora is most compared with Oracle Database, MariaDB, CockroachDB, MySQL and SAP HANA, whereas SQL Server is most compared with MariaDB, SAP HANA, Oracle Database, LocalDB and MySQL. See our Amazon Aurora vs. SQL Server report.
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