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SQL Server Review

A tool of choice for many corporate environments

Valuable Features:

• SQL server has dynamic resource allocation feature that allows disk and memory usage scale to meet changing database demands. This facility provides better performance and simplifies software management.• SQL Server’s Graphical Query Analyzer not only helps building stored procedures and interactive queries but also graphically displays the steps performed by query processor to execute the query. • SQL Server’s Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) provides services like data warehousing, data marts and decision support to many medium sized companies.• Data Transformation Services is a powerful and flexible tool provided by SQL server, it simplifies importing and exporting data between and OLE-DB compatible databases.

Room for Improvement:

• Installation and operation of SQL Server requires Internet Explorer (IE). • Reloading all the data in a database can cause potential data loss especially when the size of database is large. • No Cascading declarative referential integrity is available in SQL server.

Other Advice:

Microsoft SQL Server is the tool of choice for many corporate environments because it is a commercial database server. Its core role in the commercial world is only to store data which is slightly different than other databases like MS Access. In addition to data storage capability, MS Access allows developing a full user interface for data entry and reports generation. Whereas SQL Server simply stores data. Significant numbers of companies are moving to SQL Server. When it comes to costs SQL will very often make a very good business case.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Feb 02 2013

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2 Comments

IT Administrator at a university with 501-1,000 employees

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Very powerful but it's Microsoft based so you have to purchase it while there are other free open source database applications. Its main advantage is the fact that it is very graphical and is easy to use.

20 February 13

kleegeek

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I politely disagree with the Cons portion of your review. SQL Server does not require Internet Explorer for installation and operation. The only optional module within SQL Server that requires IE present on the server (but not required for the end users) is SQL Server Reporting Services.

I also disagree with the statement about reloading data can cause data loss if the database is large. If the product is used properly, the potential for data loss is extremely small. I load large data sets quite frequently, and data loss simply does not occur. If you are experiencing data loss during loads, you might have an infrastructure problem that is contributing to instability.

Also, SQL Server has had cascading declarative referential integrity features since SQL Server 2000. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa902684(v=sql.80).aspx for more information.

28 February 13

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