SQL Server Room for Improvement
RK
Ranjeet Kumar
Senior General Manager at Worly Plumbing Supply, Inc.
SQL Server is an expensive solution, and its pricing should be reduced.
View full review »HS
HarkamalSingh
Works at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
There are a lot of improvements in the cloud space about which we open a case with Microsoft every now and then. These improvements are not in terms of features or functionality. They are more related to their own compatibility or connectivity on which they keep on working to improve the product.
PJ
PeterJones
Professional Services Manager at Business Intelligence DA
There are a lot of things that it doesn't do in terms of business intelligence. However, you can live without a lot of them.
A lot of people want AI/ML features, but SQL Server does not really support that space. R is included but it's kind of clunky. That said, you're not going to do AI/ML with SQL Server because you're going to use Synapse, Databricks, or another similar tools.
SQL Server doesn't have proper bitmap indexing, a proper columnar database version, or proper implementation of materialized views. For example, if you want to do a materialized view, you can only do one on the base tables. You can't do a materialized view on top of another view. For us that makes materialized views useless.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
SQL Server
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SQL Server. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
AhmadTalha
Product owner at Digitt Plus (AFT)
The GUI needs improvement. From a technical perspective, it's quite complex, which may not be a problem for individuals with technical backgrounds like ours, especially since we've encountered similar interfaces. However, navigating the GUI can be challenging for newcomers or product owners without technical experience. For example, as someone transitioning from a developer role to a product management role, I find it relatively easy to use the GUI. But for those without a technical background, it's much more challenging to grasp what's happening.
View full review »PE
Phil Ernst
Chief Technology Officer at Wolff Logics
The solution’s initial setup could be complex, requiring some design of how you want to lay everything out and what type of storage you want to put certain things on.
View full review »JA
Jem Ahmed
Software Engineer at Intelligent Systems
The solution should provide users with features to automate some of the daily routines for which there are different tools available. SQL Server should serve as an out-of-the-box tool for database maintenance.
Maintenance of the solution is an area of concern, and improvements can be helpful. The solution should offer an out-of-the-box tool with automatic maintenance procedures, which could make it easier for less experienced people to set up the product easily.
MJ
seniorda483732
Senior Database Administrator at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Its ability to handle certain kinds of large data could be improved. Its high availability, segmentation, and disaster recovery features can be improved upon also.
There are not really any significant features that I'd like to see added to it.
View full review »
Azizul Haque
AVP, IT Division at NCC BANK LIMITED
It needs to be improved to handle big data for large volumes of transactions for big industries. As compared to Oracle Database, SQL Server is not suitable for big data or large organizations where the database size could be more than 100 GB or more. In our country, for a large database and a large volume of transactions, we normally use Oracle Database. Most of the large banks are shifting from SQL Server to Oracle Database because of its slowness.
View full review »HB
reviewer1264416
Domain architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
They could improve the solution by allowing more portability between on-premise and the cloud.
More improvements can be brought around hyper-threading. Like we see in work engines of hyper-threading. It is very complex in terms of the way they do it. If it was via CPU or something else, it would be much easier.
In a future release, they could improve by expanding their form base capabilities.
View full review »
Jayesh Bhandari
Group IT Head at Ashapura Minechem Ltd
There is a limitation in the SQL. There are around 4GB restrictions, which Microsoft needs to work on.
If your data volume is higher, your server performance may suffer. Microsoft needs to focus on improving stability in such scenarios.
Sumeet Zalpuri
Data engineer at ASR Nederland N.V.
The performance degrades when the data is huge. It also degrades when there is a flux of data.
View full review »
Praneeth N
Director of Product Management at SID GLOBAL SOLUTIONS LLC
The solution's stability can be improved.
View full review »
Domenico Beneventano
Professor at University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
The interface of the tool has certain shortcomings, making it an area where improvements are required.
Isam Ahmed
System analyst at Ministry of Interior
There is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to limited compatibility across the platform and restricted performance with massive data sets. Enhancing those two areas would significantly improve the operation. It is important to mention the licensing cost, as well. Optimization of the licensing options to fit different needs and businesses would be of great benefit.
MH
Mohammed Habeeb
System Administrator at ARTIc
We are using an older version of SQL Server and the migration to a newer version could be made easier.
If you are a new user then this solution could be difficult, they could improve by making the overall usage easier.
In an upcoming release, they could improve the ability to customize the solution.
View full review »AM
Aju Mathai
Database Architect at Huron Consulting
I would like to see native plugins built for other platforms versus having to buy third-party plugins to tap into S3 buckets and AWS Cloud. Right now, it does not have those built-in plugins.
I know that they are building SQL Server for the Unix environment, which is in the beta version, and not out yet. This has been a long time wish for a lot of people. Once that is out, we'll be able to tell how diversified they have become in regards to other platforms.
It hasn't 100 percent on scalability and third-party plugins.
View full review »
Atal Upadhyay
AVP at MIDDAY INFOMEDIA LIMITED
The solution’s pricing and integration could be improved.
DineshKumar27
Solution architect at Rackspace
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.
The tool is secure in nature. The security portfolios are changing day by day, and new security bugs are being released. The tool responds to users' requirements to deal with bugs and security issues. I feel that the tool should offer more security features to be made available. The security packages to be followed by users should be consolidated and sent to customers every day or every week so that they can have the security features updated. If security packages are available in a consolidated manner every month, it will be beneficial. I think there are certain areas of concern regarding the backup of the product that I have heard from my company's engineers. Sometimes, the tool doesn't support all the native features, and because of this, our company has to customize it to meet our requirements, which is a challenging process for our company's engineers. The tool has to be user-friendly- in terms of supporting the backup features and adapting to various backup environments.
XZ
Xiaoqing Zou
Integration developer at Blackwoods
The tool's support needs to be improved.
View full review »SE
Simon Evans
IT Analysis at Kirkby (Tyres) Ltd
Over the years additional features, data warehousing, cubing, just better performance and better manageability in terms of the actual Microsoft SQL Server AppLINK console.
View full review »MM
Mpho Morake
Group CEO at Mmusi Group
I would like Microsoft to evolve SQL Server because stateful databases dying are in a way. We would like to find out if it can absorb Hadoop and other similar things. They should make it useful for data mining. Data is evolving forever, and how we store it is also changing constantly. So, SQL Server also needs to change.
View full review »AK
Anandan Kanagarajan
Sr. Supervisor - Enterprises Application DBA at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The price could be better:
Compare to Oracle it is cheaper but with the existence of many open source databases currently in the market, consider reducing the Licensing cost. Secondly, with the Core-based Licensing since SQL 2012 Version, the SQL Licensing price has substantially increased.
Postgres Extensions is a concept in Postgres to extend the Postgres features that are very useful for Performance Monitoring & Optimizations. Similarly option to extend the features as necessary.
View full review »YM
YahyaMahdy
Senior Data Engeer at Qbros
When transferring data from the SQL Server to Excel, the data types are not copied correctly. This issue might be associated with the formatting of the data types. Specifically, the data types for dates and timestamps have not been copied correctly.
In SQL, as with other databases, abbreviations are commonly used to simplify tasks such as writing queries or commands.
View full review »RN
reviewer1695144
President at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Somebody who knows it would easily say, "No problem," because we set up our log shipping in about three hours. We sometimes have challenges with it in terms of timing, of getting it out, backing it up, and sending it to the cloud. There are always the glitches, but I get a daily report on what's going on. Around 30 backup jobs are running at all times, because it is a big company. It's a 200 person company.
In the next releases, I would only like more enhanced backups and more restore points. Data backup and cyber protection are the number one things everybody should be thinking about now. They may not be, but they should be. We're going to go to the Azure environment because that really is a duplicate of the on-premise environment, just somewhere else.
View full review »
Firaz Mohammed
Information Technology Manager at a retailer with 51-200 employees
The upgrades are unstable.
View full review »
Matt Hardy
Infrastructure Manager/Deployment Manager at Hivedome Consultancy Services
SQL Server should make the pricing simpler. It should add simplified load-balancing features.
View full review »PL
reviewer1056471
Manager Global Identity & Access Management at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
There is always room for improvements. In SQL Server, the databases should be able to deal with more data in a faster way. Sometimes, when you have a lot of information running on the SQL databases, the system hangs. Though there are always improvements being done to SQL Server, there's still a lack of speed in being able to process so much information, so the performance of this solution still needs to be improved.
Another area for improvement in SQL Server is its front end, in terms of running the queries, e.g. it would be better if it could give suggestions. For example: When you write something, this solution could have a feature similar to a dictionary's intelligence that will tell you what to write such as the one you have in Word, or in PowerPoint, for example, you'll have the design suggestions for it. An improvement I'd like to see in SQL Server is for it to suggest what you put next when you are writing SQL codes or queries.
View full review »BL
reviewer1389651
Certified Adjunct Faculty, School of Engineering and Computing at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The server itself doesn't need much improvement.
The product overall would benefit from the addition of better tutorials to help master the skills necessary to actually build a project database. Right now, what is available isn't sufficient.
Overall, I would suggest a nice tight integration with the toolset now known as Power BI. It might not even be missing, however, I'm planning to concentrate a lot of my time with the tutorials and I have Power BI loaded onto my HP laptop. bA brilliant student did it for me when she demoed it in a class. I'm going to use that copy of it and have many tutorials to get ready.
View full review »DV
Dany Van Den Steen
Database Administrator at Court of Audit Belgium
Improvement in SQL Server should focus on lowering the high cost, especially for environments requiring extensive CPU and memory usage like data warehousing. While existing features are great, affordability is a significant concern, particularly for enterprise licenses. Additionally, enhancements in managing availability groups and clustering could be beneficial.
JM
JasminaMarkovic
BI Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
I have experience working with SQL Server 2016 and older versions, including handling JSON data. Initially, I found the JSON capabilities to be less helpful, but over time, they have greatly improved.
SQL Server now offers extensive capabilities for working with various forms of data, particularly when communicating with text, such as in JSON format.
I particularly prefer working with these features on Azure, as it provides numerous possibilities, especially in the field of business intelligence (BI). Additionally, the serverless platform offered by Azure is highly beneficial and makes tasks easier to manage.
I have not seen significant returns thus far, but I am eager to enhance my experience by transitioning to work in Azure. This shift to Azure is something I am motivated to improve upon.
View full review »FR
Francisco Racionero
CEO Owner at ALESON ITC
I think the treatment of database storage could be improved. There is also an intermediate locked file that prevents users from inserting or writing something in the database that slows things down. I'd like to see the Perform Volume Maintenance Task made available for locked files. It would mean that the SQL server can directly grow files. Without it, you have to go to the local system account, which can disrupt users. It's connected to the local security policy.
Ali Yazıcı
IT Service Manager at Kuveyt Turk Participation Bank
The solution could offer more integration with other platforms.
View full review »MP
Marcelo Pissinati
IT Cybersecurity and Compliance Coordinator at Plaenge
There is room for improvement in terms of pricing for SQL Server.
View full review »
Prashant Baste
Sr. Solution Architect at Team Computers
I think that performance could be improved and SQL presents some challenges for us.
View full review »MB
MichaelBarnett
Sr. Training Manager with 201-500 employees
When we are talking about event space architecture, scalability generally comes into play. For example, I might have a hundred thousand transactions a second, and then all of a sudden, I build something that everybody in the world wants. The next thing I know is that I have a million transactions a second. So, to be able to process the throughput, I'd have to scale up, and then when the holidays are over, I'm again down to a hundred thousand transactions, and I want to scale back down. SQL Server is not going to do that. In this way, it is not very scalable. One of the reasons why they want us to use Kafka is so that if we need to, we can do that, but our base program is on SQL Server. So, this is where we would use a Kafka event stack so that if I need more servers, I can just write a command, and I can have more consumers, more brokers, and more producers, and when the holiday season is over, it scales right back down again. SQL Server is not going to do that.
View full review »
Ahmed-Ramy
CEO at TMentors
The remote access aspect needs to be improved in terms of security. Right now, it's a little bit hard.
Also, they need to work on the user interface, as it's a little bit old. They need to improve it a little bit.
The pricing could be lowered a bit.
View full review »SS
Shivanshu Srivastav
IT Manager : HOD at Condot Systems
Performance could be improved. There could be more support toward PHP-based websites and toward providing direct plugins for connections, and the related services or application services could be improved. The user interface could be improved so that someone with less knowledge could easily integrate and use that particular module software.
In the next release, I would like to see a separate tool provided to schedule backup or implement backup solutions on any of the servers that Microsoft has installed. This would be a small utility which I could open and point out the backup parts as well as the type of backup I want. Once I decide the time and set it up, it should be able to connect everything and then accordingly run that back up on an automated basis.
Right now, people are making their own utilities to do that same thing, but it would be helpful if we could get it directly from Microsoft. Apart from this, it would be helpful to have small plugins or API-based connections, which could be used for integrating MS SQL with different platforms.
View full review »MA
Maurice Aelion
Senior DBA & IT Consultant at MA Consulting
Database support could be improved. Oracle provides better support.
While the price of the solution is comparatively cheaper, people are paying to Microsoft, in any event, for other things that they're using.
Thoughs the licensing cost could be cheaper, this depends, as there is nobody who only uses the database with Microsoft. Every company has Windows, Office, Active Directory and all the security features of Microsoft. This means that, overall, when one buys these licenses together, he also gets the database. The focus is not on the price of the database, but what is actually being paid to Microsoft.
The licensing price could be better, more user-friendly. Things should be be moved from the enterprise to the standard edition.
View full review »RN
reviewer1572765
Manager at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
There are newer models that are available on the market. The agility of the non-SQL-based features is relevant on the market.
Integration is one thing but it's making use of all the iterations or the new cloud data result.
Today's architectures are in many different directions. Not always via SQL relational databases, but also NoSQL databases, and they have a pretty good Java database as well.
View full review »PC
Prajith Chowthee
Independent Consultant at Unaikui
Support could be improved.
View full review »
Raphael Haroun Ikyagh
Network Administrator at Letshego
The pricing could be better.
View full review »
EverVidal
Architect of Solutions at Interbank
Our biggest problem with SQL Server is latency. The communication between the cloud and the on-premises environment is slow. The data needs to be encrypted for security, and you have to exchange data certificates between environments. You can adjust the configuration to improve performance, but it would be nice if SQL Server had some templates to resolve problems.
AR
Abdelkader Raway
Works at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
We occasionally face or encounter a problem with the database table itself. Some tables and their flyers, as well as the content's data, must be truncated. It was a major issue with my ERP system because it is a backbone database application. It hasn't happened often, but it was a bad experience. Regarding some table issues, I believe we will encounter them in many applications, but I believe the other vendor, such as Oracle, has more than tools to protect my data.
In the next release, I would like to see a better user interface and a familiar syntax.
View full review »SS
Satyam Saxena
Senior Software Developer at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
They could increase the intelligence of SQL Server. That would be good for us. There are some good intelligent features in SQL Server. However, they need to increase the intelligence because people switching to SQL Server from other solutions are not so familiar with it. I've been working with SQL Server for the last six years, but people are coming from MySQL or Oracle, so it will take one or two months to adjust. Still, they could add some intelligent tools to convert Oracle into SQL Server something like that.
And sometimes when I'm writing a function, there is already a predefined structure available. So if they defined their structure more precisely, that would be good for us. And the last thing I would like to add is that SQL Server should handle queries more like Oracle does. For example, you submit a query in Oracle, and the whole table comes up. In SQL Server, you go to the table, right-click, and it lets you see the first 200 rows. Then on top of that, you can add 200 more rows.
So in place of those 200 rows, if I can update all my table records or search my table record without a new search query, it'll be very beneficial. That functionality exists in Oracle, but this feature is not available everywhere in SQL Server. So if SQL Server had the feature, it'd be great because SQL Server is lacking only on this point. For example, one of my clients is a semi-technical person, so I have to train them to file a query in SQL. And they say that Oracle is much better. Say, for example, that I wanted to query a particular employee from a list of all staff. So the query output comes, and they can directly filter out the data by just applying the filter. They don't have to use the drop-down menu and search for all the employees with a given name.
AM
reviewer1635153
VP Global Information Technology at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
I want to see one improvement and this involves the replication between the DC and DR. We have limited options at the moment and it does not lend sufficient support for the number of databases. This means we have a huge number of databases, topping approximately 2,000. For the moment, this particular replication is not supported by SQL.
The support number of databases needs to be increased, as well as the database number of databases that it supports. That support cannot be found when it comes to the replication between the DC and DR.
View full review »TP
Tim Platson
Solutions Architect at One Click
In terms of exceptionally large databases, it doesn't scale as well as Oracle. It scales excellently and it's flexible and it can provide a solution for exceptionally large databases, but it doesn't work as well as Oracle does for this particular use case. The performance starts to drag in the case of exceptionally large databases; especially where there's a lot more feature functionality. With Oracle, there's a lot more tunability.
View full review »MP
reviewer1570953
Database Administrator at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Primarily, the data replication and the backup areas can be improved. It should have data replication capabilities and uptime capabilities. The native SQL Server Backups take more time than do the backup processes from LiteSpeed, and the backup compression is a little less.
View full review »
Alvaro Callupe Arias
Key Account Manager at Sumteccorp
SQL Server could be more robust than Oracle.
View full review »TL
Tim Lenz
SQL Database Administrator at Aurora Mental Health Center
Every time Microsoft comes out with a new version, they like to move everything around. Updates are a bit intrusive. For example, it used to be in a certain place and then they update it, and now I can't find it.
Technical support could be better.
View full review »TN
ThembaNhlapo
System engineer at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
If SQL Server could perhaps run on Linux, that would be good. Most of us prefer Linux and I've used a lot of Linux. I understand that SQL Server is quite powerful, but I'm not sure if the functionality is there, but if it could be used in an open-source type of environment, it would be very good.
BC
BruceCollins
Senior Developer at a government with 51-200 employees
I would like to see better integration between their link server and other platforms, such as IBM, due to the fact that, a lot of times, you want to set up a linked server so you can be on SQL and pull data off of another server using that link server. Sometimes they don't play well together. There just needs to be better integration for those types of situations.
View full review »SM
Sanjeeb Mohanty
Global Head ICT (CITP & MIE) at The Aga Khan Academies
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.
Prashant Baste
Sr. Solution Architect at Team Computers
The solution is very different from Oracle, which is a product we also use.
Mainly the data capacity needs to be improved. The data values are limited. They are smaller or medium scale. The MySQL is working fine, however, when it comes to large data sets or large data volumes, Oracle can handle them better. The backup capacity needs to be bigger.
View full review »RM
RogerMorera
Digital Transformation Architect at Comdata
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.
View full review »
Reza Sadeghi
Software Development Team Lead at asa com
If you have a lot of data and you want to perform computations on it, you will have problems and the performance will be degraded.
There are problems when you are dealing with Big Data and it doesn't scale very well. For example, in Hadoop, you can partition your data very well, but in SQL Server, you can't do that. If it could handle horizontal scaling then that would be an improvement.
We experience latency at times when there is a lot of data being processed. In Iran, there is a specific time when all of the markets are open, and a lot of people are using the data to make decisions. Performing actions at that specific time gives us a lot of problems because of limitations in SQL Server. The problem seems to be caused by writing a lot of data to the table at the same time.
Improving the intelligence for managing the SQL server would be very good.
View full review »
Rafael Keller
IT Manager at Pluris Midia
The pricing could be improved.
I would like to have the option to use fewer processors for certain tasks, thus reducing the licensing fee. That would be great.
View full review »SA
Scott Albritton
Applications Business Intelligence Analyst at a aerospace/defense firm with 10,001+ employees
Multiple operating systems support should improve. The ongoing and newly marketed support for Linux and Unix environments running SQL Server is a big win for Microsoft, in my opinion.
Previous hold back related to open source environments stemmed from admins or management who would not run SQL Server for various reasons which many times boiled down to not liking Microsoft as a company.
Open source and Microsoft have conflicted in the open source world for years, but I think Microsoft is finally starting to turn that tide in an effort to compete with other vendors.
View full review »MM
reviewer2112948
Consultant at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Sometimes we experience issues with its stability.
View full review »BL
Bjarne Lindquist
Owner at 2 Bit
I could use some more guidelines about making the correct queries to understand the structure better. I'd like to have a better idea and to understand how to make a nice query, which is good for the system and good for the hardware.
Sometimes you have to have different data in different tables and you want to merge them into something together. I'd like to be able to do this in a different way.
Sometimes I need to have more optimization. I want to understand how can I optimize this or that? Especially now, when we're working with a lot of camera information, where we are using a lot of cameras for photogrammetry, we need to take this data and put it into the SQL Server and we would like to be more flexible with the data.
With so much data, things can get slow, which is why I would like to be able to understand how to better optimize queries.
Those who are not familiar with the solution can find the initial setup intimidating and difficult.
View full review »FZ
reviewer1641576
Principal Database And Cloud Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The price could be better. It costs a lot, and competing databases like Postgres are free.
DG
reviewer1001628
Information Systems Manager at a aerospace/defense firm with 51-200 employees
They can build more performance-tuning tools in it. They can also make the stuff a little more user-friendly and provide the ability to schedule jobs.
They can perhaps also streamline it a little bit so that it is not so resource-intensive, which would be helpful. SQL Server has a tendency to consume all the memory you allow it to. If you are not careful, you can basically break your server. I would like to see it having a smaller footprint in terms of system resource consumption.
They might want to consider re-evaluating their pricing. It is expensive.
View full review »MM
reviewer2356620
Development Associate & Manager at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
There are certain shortcomings in the scalability of the product, making it an area where improvements are required.
From an improvement perspective, the price of the product needs to be reduced.
Mohamed Abozied
Network Administrator at Alsafy
There should be more security updates for the product. That would be ideal.
View full review »US
Uchechi Sylvanus
Team Lead, Process Improvement at Fidelity Bank Plc
The pricing could be more affordable.
It's like to see less frequent updates. They should be once a month.
View full review »PT
Paulo Toscano
Database Administration Team Leader at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Analysis services have a lot of room for improvement. Basically, manageability on the available tools. They should have improved them already. They are not very efficient. My main headache is with the analysis service, and it would be really good if Microsoft developed some additional tools that are more user-friendly to manage the analysis. This is both from the perspective of management, users' roles, and performance analysis. My main wish for SQL Server would be that management tools for analysis services grow and mature a bit.
View full review »SL
reviewer1385976
Enterprise Architect at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees
We have had problems implementing a data warehouse using SQL Server. It may be because the data is too big, although it claims to be able to handle the amount of data that we have. Perhaps there are some technical issues because there is something weird going on. It cannot find the correct IP address.
View full review »
ChristineSpence
Software Solutions Account Manager at First Technology
The tool needs to improve its pricing and technical support.
View full review »
Karoly Krokovay
CEO at Informula Ltd
SQL Server has good performance, but it could be better.
View full review »AS
Amir Saudi
Business Intelligence Manager at a consumer goods company with 10,001+ employees
Something that could be improved is the cost because it's very high. That's the only thing I'm concerned about but the technology is good. We are looking forward to getting some discounts because we have a large amount of data.
GK
reviewer1671969
Data Architect at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
One thing I don't like about SQL Server is the way they've set up security with users and groups. It just doesn't seem that intuitive to me. Adding some more explanatory information might help some. Sometimes the documentation is a little thin, but the same could be said about a lot of products.
View full review »SK
Santosh Kurakula
Group DWH and BI Senior Manager at Virgin Mobile Middle East and Africa
SQL Server could improve by enhancing the integration abilities, adding more inbuilt data security features, and simplifying the maintenance.
View full review »OK
OmidKoushki
Solution Architect at KIAN company
SQL Server needs to improve in performance and monitoring because there are no specific monitoring solutions to detect and analyze events for issues in the database. You have to use another monitoring solution. If Microsoft could provide an update to this solution or provide a monitoring solution specifically for SQL Server, it would be very valuable.
View full review »
Gajanan Shalgar
Software Engineer at OMFYS Technologies India Pvt.Ltd
SQL Server is technically good. For questions or other queries, we go through the internet and they explain it there. I think the structure of their product is good.
View full review »LA
Lional Angelo
Manager Digital Technologies at a real estate/law firm with 51-200 employees
Microsoft doesn't have active-active load balancing scenarios. It's always a failover cluster. There is no active-active cluster, which other tools, other database providers like Oracle, provide. If Microsoft can consider or probably come up with an active-active cluster, then it would be good. It will be more powerful in a scenario like that.
The pricing, while not the most expensive, is still quite high.
They have something called Parallel Queries, however, I don't know how it works. I've never tested it in a horizontal way. I'd like to understand a bit more about it and be able to use it horizontally.
View full review »
Balaji E
Senior Database Administrator at Torry Harris Integration Solutions
We need it to support Linux for better troubleshooting flexibility.
View full review »
Tushar Rahatekar
Sr. Systems Analyst at a maritime company with 10,001+ employees
Performance-wise, SQL cannot handle large amounts of data. In the next release, I would like them to commission SQL Server on Linux, as has been announced in the past but has not yet happened.
View full review »
Sundaresan Subramanyan
Founder and Managing Director at Analytic Brains Technologies Private Limited
I would like to see SQL Server add the ability to write to multiple sites or support replication between multiple sites at the transaction level. If we can have data available on multiple sites as quickly as possible, that would be a great feature.
View full review »GS
Gheorghe SANDRU
Managing Partner at Bizz Advisers SRL
SQL Server consumes a lot of resources. You need to keep an eye on the number of resources involved. It expands and uses all of the memory available on the server. For this reason, I install it on separate machines.
Also, the ability to connect with other environments needs to be improved.
View full review »
Kevin Honde
Data Solution Architect at Econet Wireless Zimbabwe
Its security can be improved. When you look at the Windows environment, it isn't the most secure environment. It is exposed to so many attacks. They continuously need to improve the security of the platform on which it sits.
View full review »
Girish Vijay
Deputy Manager IT at Carl Bechem Lubricants India Pvt. Ltd.
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. A SQL Server CAL is required for a user to access or use the services or functionality of either edition of SQL Server and frequent updates to the latest versions will lead to obsolete and discontinuing the security patches has to be improved.
View full review »IG
Irwin Gibson
Chief ICT Officer at Barbados Public Workers Cooperative Credit Union Ltd
The tool is expensive.
View full review »
Miyoba Sichimwi
Information Technology Security Officer at South African National Accreditation System (sanas)
SQL Server could improve by being more user-friendly, it is still geared towards specialists. Additionally, the monitoring system is difficult to use, not everyone can use it well. The configuration should be able to be done through the GUI.
View full review »AS
Azeezulla Sheriff
General Manager IT at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
I would like to have the ability to restore backups in the next release.
View full review »
Ashif Shaikh
Senior Database Administrator at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
It is very costly, and that's the reason people are moving away from SQL Server.
They have started using Linux, and Linux is the way forward for SQL Server. They have to invest a lot in that.
View full review »
Alaa T Alhorani
Sr. Consultant (Enterprise Architect) at Devoteam
In my experience, while working with multiple sectors, such as banking, services, et cetera, there are some limitations for some sectors when dealing with the data.
It would be great if we were able to run it on multiple operating systems and not only stick with Windows.
View full review »RV
reviewer1624716
2de Solution Engineer - storage & compute at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
We'd like the deployment process to be better in the future.
The licensing is pretty expensive.
View full review »MS
reviewer1428423
Head of Technical Support at a real estate/law firm with 51-200 employees
They could improve by adding the SQL format.
View full review »
AhmedElbadry
NMS Service Automation & RPA Technical Lead at Vodafone
The solution should work to improve its search functionality.
It would be ideal if the solution offered better integration capabilities. In the future, we expect that our company will need to make more integrations with other systems.
View full review »DI
Dimitris Iracleous
Lead Technical Instructor at codehub
I would like to have a more directed modeling, to have the flexibility to design all databases using a graphic interface. In other words, the interface integration could be better.
To avoid the need to write code, many users like to use the database diagrams as an overall tool and, as such, the solution should be more flexible and user-friendly.
MB
reviewer1494501
BI Developer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The issue is that Microsoft is not really supporting the Multi Dimensional Analysis Services feature any longer and it's looking very obsolete. We're looking at replacing it.
SSAS-MD is difficult to make changes. It's a very complicated product in general — that's the issue. It is too complicated for most. It's too difficult to change. It's too difficult!
View full review »ST
reviewer1022898
Director at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Indexing, as well as integration, are areas of this product that need improvement.
View full review »AS
Aditya Sawant
Assistant Manager at ECU
I'd like to see a simplification of the query optimizer and feel that SQL needs to look into the internal processing of the query because the query optimizer sometimes uses a different query plan, which we don't expect. It is similar to the triggers they have which are used after execution and not before. For example, if I'm running a query, my trigger will be run after the query has executed although I sometimes need the trigger before execution. That's a feature not supported by the product.
SB
Shanti Sahu
Cloud Data Architect (Data service Team) at NTT Data India Enterprise Application Services Pri
In terms of what could be improved, everything on-premises is now moving to the cloud. Obviously SQL Server has also moved because Microsoft has its own cloud called Azure SQL and azure synapse. Every solution comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. Each cloud has its own way to maintain resources and that plays a major role. But I would say that Azure Clouds are easy to work as compared to others. To Performance-wise it's still not as good as on-premises, but it is easy to work with. For example, if you are familiar with the SQL server then you don't need to put any effort to work on the Azure SQL or Azure Synapse. Your efficiency will not decrease and you can easily manage any projects. Its advantage is that it is very similar. Apart from that, if you moving to any other Warehouse like Snowflake, redshift with existing SQL server resources is a little difficult and organizations need to spend money on their training. Which increases cost.
View full review »PS
Prakash Somasundaran
Project Advisor at A private sector Company
I am not sure if these areas have been taken care in SQL 2012 but areas for improvement include:
1.In SQL 2008 ,Data encryption is not a fully mature feature.Encryption works fine for individual rows.For handling a batch a for loop has to be written.This is not straight forward.
2.Horizontal partitioning is not a fully mature feature.In horizontal partitioning Partition key has to be part of primary key.This becomes difficult to implement in already existing database.
NY
reviewer2265342
Consultant at a tech company with self employed
When we run into problems, it's usually during installation, and finding answers to the problem has been a nightmare because the documentation is terrible.
Likewise, I find the business reporting rather poor, and the solution doesn't work well as a data warehouse product. When I tried to use it as one, I did not find it very satisfactory.
View full review »KG
reviewer1488372
Associate Manager at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees
You need to be careful if you have a very large amount of data, because the platform can be degraded if you're not on top of it. Oracle handles that issue better and it's the main problem I have with SQL Server. The performance should be better.
JJ
JohannesJoubert
Business Solutions Architect at a real estate/law firm with 501-1,000 employees
It is costly to implement high throughput systems, beyond millions of transactions per second. The hardware to run the systems, especially for high availability deployments is expensive, i.e. more resources to run.
Linux-based editions are not yet proven to be on par with Windows deployments.
Row-level security is obscure to implement.
Running cloud offerings are expensive; for example, the Instance as a Service offering.
Third-party tooling is required to manage code version control.
Managing BLOB data is not equally simple to implement.
The engine that implements query plans was updated in the 2012/2014 refresh that could necessitate a costly rewrite of queries.
View full review »NS
Navee Srichaiyanont
IT manager at IRPC PCL
Overall, the solution could be improved in future releases. We hope to improve the way we use it ourselves in our next project.
The solution could offer better integration with other solutions - specifically Microsoft.
View full review »
it_user422262
CEO/CTO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The only real improvement I've been looking for is finally being addressed by Microsoft.
Since SQL Server only ran on Windows, it was not competitive with other platforms which could run on Linux. This has recently been realized with the release of SQL Server for Linux. I currently have the pre-release version and I'm very impressed with what they have so far.
View full review »
Serban Stancu
Technical Director/ Project Manager / Consultant at SC Iceberg Data Intelligence SR
The stability of the solution should be improved in the next release. Sometimes it is great, sometimes it is troublesome. I would also like data conversion and the code pages to be a bit more straightforward.
View full review »
Muhammad_Irfan
Sr. Network Administrator at ACMC
SQL Server could be improved with cheaper licensing because it's very expensive.
View full review »AL
reviewer1652016
Senior Service Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
If it would be more powerful it would be pretty nice. The performance is not always the best.
Whenever we were setting up the databases, there were some character problems that did not exist on some of the other solutions. However, the exact issues are hard to recall and list. I prefer Linux solutions. That said, when we began the previous project, Microsoft SQL Server was not available for Linux platforms yet.
Nowadays, it's my understanding that there are different versions. I haven't been checking if the current versions are supporting Transact-SQL and stuff like that. I remember that when we had the first Linux-based SQL Servers were introduced, they were, of course, a bit limited from the feature point of view. Whenever it is Unix or Linux or whatever platform, it's easier to manage them and to handle them whenever you are doing remote work.
I'm not so big fan of the Microsoft platforms as a server. However, whenever it's needed then it's needed. If you are a consultant, you need to adjust your whole mindset to whatever it's needed.
MF
Mohamed_Farouk
Information Technology Manager at OrchidaSoft
If you work with more than 50 gigs of data, it will run slower than Oracle.
Security is an area that can be improved. It could be more secure; more security is needed.
We have some clients who have been exposed to the SQL injection virus.
We would like SQL to be able to manage this problem or to come up with an alerting system to alert the user that the server has been exposed. This has become more of an issue because of the Corona Virus and people are working from home.
Some have been infected by the SQL injection Virus and will lose their data.
View full review »BM
Biswajit Mohanty
Senior Manager - RPA & Transition at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
You do need to have technical knowledge in order to install the solution. It's not something a layperson can do.
The scalability can always be improved.
View full review »SB
Surendra Bajracharya
Software Manager at a computer software company with 1-10 employees
Our customers are willing to pay less. For SQL server they have to buy it, they have to purchase the license. So, if we can get some free open source, like Firebird, InterBase, Firebase, or something like MySQL and also PostgreSQL, whichever one is suitable for us, we'd like to pick one.
Additionally, in some cases it is quite difficult, like the lack of ease of the replication and other issues. They have to improve on that. They do not have features like "always on," which is complicated.
One feature which we don't like is that they are providing CLR, and CLR can only be written in dot net, C sharp. But actually it should be open for all languages to write CLR so that we can hide our code. The next thing is that the tangent PSQ is encryptable but it is decryptable, as well. From the developer's point of view, all procedures are exposed.
Meindert Van Der Galiën
Information Technology Software Developer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
With any development language, any programming or software language available, there's always room for improvement.
With SQL, it requires the more advanced integrated capabilities of Postgres, however, those capabilities do really come with obvious kinds of costs. For example, if SQL were to improve its functionality to incorporate the functionality that is in Postgres. Obviously, some kind of financial licensing will need to be incorporated. It's a bit of a catch-22 with a system similar to an SQL Server. If we want to avoid costs, we have to take a step back from certain integration capabilities.
From a development perspective, the solution needs to be a lot easier to understand or it needs to be easier to implement API packages for connection pooling so we don't have connection interruptions when, let's say, a hundred people simultaneously access the network on a given system, utilizing a specific or single database. Any type of connection pool or connection integration that could increase the total number of users to access simultaneously would be beneficial. That said, I also know there are some security risks involved with that type of connection pooling. However, something from SQL-side that can increase its connection access or its connection stability for multiple user access to a single database system would be great.
View full review »PV
reviewer2384076
BI Specialist at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
The pricing and quality of the product could be improved.
View full review »MN
Michael Ndwiga
IT Officer at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
The solution could be better when it comes to security.
The solution is part of Windows services, which means that if these should stop running, the database system, too, would be affected. This makes it very crucial to constantly monitor the SQL Server, something which reflects on cheap personnel time.
Scalability could be better.
Although it comes with a cost, using the most recent version is highly advisable, since it would ensure a certain measure of bug fixes and stability. The sole issue would involve the cost, as this is expensive.
When it comes to integratable features, the monitoring should be addressed.
JM
reviewer1715886
SQL Server Senior Architect at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
SQL Server could improve the integration with nonrational database solutions, such as MongoDB.
View full review »MO
reviewer1613988
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
We may use different levels of SQL Server when it comes to licensing. We have some Enterprise and some Standard services. They can improve the recovery processes of the replication or disaster recovery scenarios for the lower-tiered version, such as the Standard server.
While we have many options in Enterprise, it's expensive for most companies.
The configuration process can be a little complex.
Technical support can take a while to respond in Turkey.
The solution may be better with some integration with some factory cloud software. With the standard version, the lodgement process is never enough. We are replicating near real-time to make recovery easy and to make all the RPO targets as expected.
You cannot recover SQL Servers, especially for big financial companies like ours. It's not easy to erect SQL Servers on any other site, and with an acceptable data loss in the foundations.
View full review »YT
reviewer1478394
Information Security Manager at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
The solution should be more secure and stable and have better performance, particularly as concerns the endpoint operating systems. I would like to have a better operating system that links the CPU and the RAM efficiently.
For the majority of our servers we have not used other operating systems, although there are certain features or requirements that necessitated their use, such as Red Hat. This was rare. Mostly, we used Windows OS.
As for the performance issue, we have recently encountered situations in which everything would fail in spite of the CPU and memory being 100 percent operable.
View full review »FA
Florent ADODO
IT Assistant at Hotel 2 Fevrier
As SQL Server could not support the number of connections we desired, we were forced to go with Oracle. This is an area that needs to be improved.
View full review »HP
hugodpereira
Computer engineering student at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
I don't have a deep technical knowledge of the solution. It's hard to discuss features that may be lacking.
The solution could be better integrated with the SQL Server Studio tool.
There are some complexities with the initial setup sometimes as there are a lot of options.
View full review »HV
Helder Valente
Infrastructure and Networks at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I would like to see more integration with other platforms.
View full review »MM
reviewer1187943
Director of Data Analytics at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Scalability is an area that needs improvement, and the deployment is difficult, which why I'm looking for an appliance to deploy it in a much more scalable way.
I would like to know how you can scale to be a large enterprise server.
View full review »SP
SashisekharPanda
General Manager/MVP at Yotta Infrastructure Solutions LLP
The scalability and the high availability feature can be expanded or improved. Currently, there is a limitation on scalability.
A feature similar to the Oracle Diagnostic feature can be included to provide a better user experience.
НЕ
Недашковский Евгений
Senior SQL DBA at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
I like it the way it is, though I would appreciate a dark theme for SQL Server Management Studio and ability to add databases with TDE enabled into availability groups.
I am aware of Connect and Trello pages, and there are a lot of good ideas from other people, most of them are useful only in some very rare scenarios. There are interesting suggestions present, and Microsoft should pay more attention.
View full review »BG
Gh0ce
Systems Analyst/DBA at Vecima Networks
Setting up some of the more complex systems could be simpler. Things like service broker can be tricky to set up for the inexperienced.
View full review »SA
Albeez
IT Director at DAR AL ARKAN
The Always ON (High Availability) functionality is support only with the MS SQL enterprise edition. It would be beneficial to many if this feature were also made available in the Standard Edition.
View full review »
MakhosonkeMatshoba
ESM Specialist at LetsCloudIT
The solution could have additional security.
View full review »VB
reviewer1803756
Data Analyst at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
While using it, we really didn't experience any pain points. It doesn't need any additional features.
View full review »BR
reviewer1037115
senior system integrator at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
The stability of the product needs to be improved. It's really not stable enough.
In Microsoft, the Active-Active options are not available. There are a lot of requirements that are coming right from the customer, which may not be provided by Microsoft. There are a few use cases where we do need the Active-Active options instead of Active-Passive, yet those kinds of options are not available for Microsoft.
View full review »EM
reviewer1703928
Enterprise Solutions Architect at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees
While this is a reliable product, it has room for improvement.
Although Microsoft SQL was accessible in some projects, we did not use it everywhere. It is determined by the project. It's quite beneficial in some circumstances, but it couldn't support SQL databases in others, consequently, we used other suppliers like Oracle, Informix DB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and others.
View full review »VG
reviewer1322280
Regional Head Customer Experience at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
SQL Server could improve by increase the performance, it cannot handle large amounts of data. I did not find any additional features compared to others solutions.
View full review »ID
Irad Dukad
IT Manager at ducart
The maintenance and tasks should be improved so as to reduce database files.
The complexity of the database should also be reduced, so that its size can be diminished.
View full review »AG
Alberto Geminiani
Technical Director at Progetti e Soluzioni
We're quite satisfied with the solution. There aren't any outstanding features we would like to add.
The interface could be updated to make it slightly more user-friendly.
View full review »AM
reviewer1359642
Sr. DBA/Developer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Occasionally the performance, as good as it is, is a bit off. We sometimes experience memory spiking. If they could maybe fix that aspect of the solution, that would be quite helpful for our organization.
View full review »NM
NipunaMaliga
Systems Specialist at Zillione Technology
They do not offer the SQL Server Management tool via the installation. It is a separate tool I use when I'm trying to configure the mirroring with SQL Server Mirroring. This is not supported and I'm getting some errors on the database mirroring. So sometimes I use the 2014 management console and the 2017 server for that. If the customer does not agree to that, I use a query for the database mirroring connections.
Additionally, I think some kind of machine learning related feature should be included. This is because technology is moving fast and all of the customers are getting it easier. So developers are making machine learning products. That's why they should include some kind of a machine learning feature here, too.
View full review »it_user79482
Senior Developer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
An area that definitely needs improvement is the Reporting Service side with the actual report server. Although to be fair, Microsoft has developed a new branch of tools for reporting; presumably that is why they have not improved the Reporting Service side. Nevertheless, if this was not the case then, yes, it would be an area for improvement. Another area would be the SQL Server process monitoring, which is quite basic and could sustain more information.
View full review »
Mudasir Shafi
Testing Lead at Enstoa
The security features of the solution could be better.
View full review »IH
reviewer1159494
Advisory Software Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Other than Synapse and the other version of SQL Server, they face some problems while processing the data. For example, the one issue we face is that when we need to process the queue, it's costly with Azure and SQL Servers. We also face some memory issues with that.
View full review »RC
Ryan Cerney
Principal JDE Business Analyst at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
On the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) side, I have noticed more bugs in terms of being able to connect to our SQL servers. I can't tell how many times my recent server list got dropped or cleaned out. It is a pain, and it would be nice to have that recent connect list when you connect in. For whatever reason, once in a while, I get a hard error, and it'll close. When I go back in, everything is cleared out. It is annoying when you are working with more than a hundred database instances.
View full review »KJ
reviewer1233759
Deputy Manager at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
I would like to see improvements made to the stability of SQL Server, as well as more analytics requirements.
RZ
Roman Zubrytsky
Principal, Sr. IT Consultant at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
The Management Studio is a pretty heavy piece of software, and it's sometimes slow. I would recommend making an express version of the Management Studio, which is lighter and has fewer features but is a little faster.
View full review »CL
reviewer1621938
Senior BI Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
If this solution could provide an automatic indexing feature it would be very useful.
In the next release, there could be better integration with Power BI or other tools.
View full review »MY
reviewer1523223
IT at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
The Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition have certain limitations. While the latter is clearly more expensive than the former, it would be nice to see some of the features in the Enterprise Edition be moved to the Standard Edition. This will encourage many more people to use that solution.
If we were discussing the 2000 edition in respect of the SQL Server, I would probably cite security and performance as issues. However, nowadays, when it comes to an application connected to their databases, there is no real difference between MS SQL Server and Oracle. As a consequence, it would be nice to see the application be made more cost-effective. I am aware of much database self-management in respect of Oracle. I know that the last time a colleague of mine used this solution in California, he informed me that the application itself was managing the database.
At present, the solution uses the older connection and the schema is designed in such a way that it can actually provide a very low level of virtualization. Since the security is also hierarchical within the system, they've really done a very good job.
This said, I would like to see the database become fully automated.
PR
reviewer1569966
Technical Specialist at a media company with 10,001+ employees
The documentation could be much better. It's lacking right now. If there are better help pages, for even complicated queries and stuff like that that would be quite a help for users.
There were times where it was not working all the time, however, that could be due to some issues on our network side as well. I'm not really sure of that, and therefore can't blame the solution. However, I do remember experiences where, when I tried something, it didn't work.
SJ
reviewer1407519
Chief Technology Officer & Vice President, Delivery at a recruiting/HR firm with 1-10 employees
Its support for JSON should be improved. It does support JSON, but the support is not good enough currently.
They should also improve the way indexes work. Its performance can also be improved because sometimes it becomes very slow for certain table designs.
It cannot have more than a certain amount of data. As compared to other databases, its capability to handle large volumes of data is not very good.
View full review »
KopanoRamaphoi
Consultant at Rpc Data
More things in SQL Server need to be automated. We need to do a lot of things, especially on the cloud, and Oracle has better automation for handling these kinds of tasks. Automation is the key, these days.
View full review »
Ryan Dave Brigino
Software Engineer at Es'hailSat
The solution was delivered to us, and we really don't interface with the solution directly. I can't speak to any features that are missing.
The only people that can use it directly are developers. It's not for everyday users.
The pricing in general could be better.
View full review »MS
Mike Sax
Vice President, Product Engineering at Logitix
The Message Broker portion of the solution is not very scalable in comparison to the rest of the solution. The problem is, you can exclude that portion.
The Task Scheduler has a lot of shortcomings. This could be improved quite a bit.
The enterprise version of the product should be more cost-effective.
View full review »MA
MartinAnderson
Owner at BNS
Price could be cheaper, and access to reporting tools should be better.
View full review »RL
Rmegio Lawag
Technical Department Manager at Direcbusiness Technologies, Inc.
I think a web console for the management studio, I think that would be a good thing. I think also on load balancing. I think that's something that we can use.
View full review »it_user823959
Works at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The reporting services of the solution (SSRS and now Power BI) are the less valuable items of the SQL Server suite.
View full review »HT
Hoang Ta
System Engineer at CMC CSI saigon
We have no vision. We don't know when or how we have been hacked.
We require expert support with it. That is why I am looking for CRMs.
View full review »
Ferhat Alkan
Kurucu, Bilgisayar Programcısı at Optimus Yazılım
The solution is lacking a compound index for comparing values as you find in PostgreSQL. SQL Server doesn't support that feature so we need to build binary indexes to be able to compare those compound values. I'd also like to see AI capabilities. Oracle has a cloud solution which maintains its own indexes. If you buy a service from Oracle's cloud system, it keeps track of the queries that you have made to the database and it automatically implements its own indexes. It's such a good optimized database and I'd like to see an SQL Server that maintains its own indexes with AI capability.
I have an issue with memory support: If you create a table and a third procedure followed by an additional procedure using that third procedure, and then wish to alter the original table with the two dependent objects, you have to drop those third procedures and alter the table and recreate dependencies. Those dependencies make it impossible to work in an online environment. If there's a problem, for example, in your implementation and you have to modify a production system, for example, it can't be done. SQL Server generates DLL files in this instance and you can't change DLLs of a running program. It should be easy for them to solve.
View full review »VA
reviewer1162596
Data Analyst at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
SQL Server backups could be better.
View full review »
Al Fath Nuur Rochman
Co-Founder at a logistics company with 1-10 employees
The product needs improvement in its UX design. A newer interface is what I'd like to see in the next release of SQL Server.
FN
Florent NOPOUDEM
Senior Database Administrator at ITGStore
Although I am satisfied with the solution, some clients have asked us to resolve technical issues, such as those involving silver solution and replication.
MC
reviewer1642500
Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
It could be more stable.
View full review »MP
Mohammed-Pasha
CEO at SkyNet
Security is an issue. This is an area that needs to be improved.
There is security built-in, but most of the developers don't emphasize the security enough. When they are building the products or databases, they don't focus on the security of the database.
View full review »ST
MD.SIHAB TALUKDAR
System Engineer at asa
The number of concurrent users is too limited and other databases are better than SQL in this regard.
There are limitations with load balancing.
We would like to see support for in-memory processing.
View full review »it_user715902
CEO and Founder at a tech services company
The Query Store is a good start, but I expect the query processor to be a lot smarter and to use machine learning in order to improve and adjust execution plans automatically.
View full review »PN
Paul Nockolds
Data Analyst at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Learning SQL could be easier. Some inbuilt tools to enable faster query writing would be very useful.
View full review »it_user290769
Enterprise Architect with 51-200 employees
Hosting multidimensional OLAP instances in conjunction with Tabular, rather than the either/or installation.
OLAP multidimensional ongoing maintenance - automated partitioning or interface for streamlining the mechanism within the cube and data layers.
Integration Services: There is a great deal of room for improvement here in that thepackages are the least extensible part of the platform. Even with the feature ofplatform variables, since these are not easily managed and deployed. Our testers have had a great deal of difficulty swapping environments, particularly where the connection information changes (underlying database name, for example). Changing servers with identical database names is less problematic.
View full review »EO
Edgar Orare
Senior Systems Engineer at Dimension Data
Their support could be better. There should be more visibility on the progress of the ticket, and their last line of support should be more knowledgeable. Other than that, we have nothing to complain about.
View full review »TU
TonderayiUsada
Managing Director at D3
We want to move to Azure, and the solution could be made better to make the process easier for the migration from on-premise to the cloud.
View full review »MR
reviewer909060
IT Developer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
SQL Server could integrate better with other platforms.
View full review »IC
reviewer1646865
ICT Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The product can cost a bit, however, it depends on how you use it.
The solution could be more secure.
View full review »OB
Ossama Benaziz
Operations Director at ALTERSIS Performance
The solution needs to be more secure. It's lacking, compared to, for example, Oracle.
The product needs to work on its scalability. Oracle can scale a bit more effectively.
Sometimes we have some performance issues. It's not like Oracle. Oracle is more powerful in terms of performance.
View full review »DB
reviewer1473555
Sr Tech Business Analyst, Group Data Projects & Ventures at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Due to the fact that I'm dealing with the product more as a data analyst, the SQL Server management studio is really relatively primitive compared to other more advanced tools. There are other tools on the market that are much more advanced. It would be better if they managed to give us a bit more of a user-friendly product with just a bit more meat on the bone. It's a bit basic.
There are a number of features that are lacking. Just recently I had to do something and it's not available on the SQL Server. However, it's available on another solution that's actually a much cheaper product.
Some areas need improvement. For example, how you deal with the manipulation of data is probably not the best.
View full review »it_user158343
Software Architect at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
We do not have much to complain about SS 2016 Dev Ed in itself, we do have some complaints regarding licensing for SQL Server 2016 Enterprise Ed. In an emerging market like Argentina, it is very steep for our customers to pay U$S 28,000 or more on licensing for an instance of SS 2016 Enterprise Ed, and this poses a limiting factor to our growth.
View full review »it_user290733
IT Consultant & IT Project Manager Assistant with 10,001+ employees
SSIS needs improvement.
I think that it should be easier in managing SQL packages, especially when we have multiple environments. With Kerberos Authentication, we had different issues on this and sometimes, we needed Microsoft Support too. Thus, a better and an organized SQL package review is needed.
View full review »it_user158343
Software Architect at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
We do not have much to complain about SQL Server 2016 Developer Edition in itself.
We do have some complaints regarding licensing. In an emerging market like Argentina, it is very steep for our customers to pay USD 28,000 or more on licensing for an instance of SQL Server 2016 Enterprise Edition. This poses a limiting factor to our growth.
SB
Sipho Ngubonde
Admin at IEC (Electoral Commission of South Africa)
SQL could be improved by making all features available on the on-premise version of the product as well as the cloud version. When you buy the on-premise version, it's sort of an inferior product compared to the cloud version, which seems to get most of the latest and greatest features.
View full review »VC
reviewer938061
Sr. Solution Architect at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
If I compare the solution with current technology needs, like NoSQL, that have been prevailing now, they could improve it so there could be a single solution, where we could deal with a single database for both transactional as well as for the in-memory needs that we have.
For the integration part, additional interfaces would be an improvement. If SQL Server could expose certain APIs or certain interfaces which can be used for integration with the warehouse solution, then it would be great.
View full review »MK
Mazen Kassem
Senior Digital Services Engineer at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The IT and digital transformation department are a bit fresh in this company that I am working for. They have a lot of plans, a lot of visions. I don't know how are they are going to do the infrastructure. I don't know their vision.
So far, the solution fits the scope of our company. We aren't missing any features.
The integration could be better. They are not open-source, so the integration with other platforms is not that easy.
SW
Stephan Warreyn
GF at Innopact GmbH
VP
reviewer1501629
Chief Information Officer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
We had some difficulty doing the performance tuning when we migrated from the 2008 version to the 2016 version. We experienced a drop in the performance. We could not understand or figure out what caused the drop in performance. We did not change any settings to cause this effect. We tried to keep the same settings.
We feel that when running the 2008 version, it was much quicker in terms of performance.
That is an area of SQL Server that can be improved. Moving to a new version, you shouldn't have to change the configuration.
We have not been able to utilize it fully because it is not straightforward.
I would like to see the performance improved. Migrating should be easier and the scalability needs improvement.
View full review »KV
Karel Van Der Walt
Data Architect at ACPAS Loan Management Software
The solution has legacy issues when it comes to compatibility. If you have older technology, you may run into compatibility problems with SQL.
The solution is rather expensive.
View full review »JP
reviewer1470330
Analytics Manager - Data and Capability at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
The solution could use better governance on the management side, especially around data governance.
The product could do better at allowing for integrations.
View full review »KG
reviewer1413750
Lead Data Architect at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
The performance needs some improvement and it needs more features integrated into it.
Technical support could be better.
Scalability could be less costly.
One of the conflicts with Microsoft is if you have an enterprise relationship, you have to deal with a third-party offering Microsoft solutions.
In the 2016 version, they don't have support for Python. It may be included with the 2019 version but if they don't, I would like to see support for Python implemented.
View full review »JM
Johan Malan
System administrator at a mining and metals company with 10,001+ employees
In terms of improvement, it could use more integration with other products.
View full review »PS
reviewer1030020
Programmer Analyst at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Every good tool has its own limitations.
- First of all its cost. It is very high.
- We need a good amount of RAM to properly use this.
- Sometimes, query sticks in between.
But our organization provides great RAM, so we don't have any issue with its speed.
View full review »磊刘
Lei Liu
DBA，data architectuire at LG CNS Co.
Horizontal partitioning.
In that case, cold , warm and hot data can be distributed into different database not only table partition located on different FGs .
View full review »it_user796899
Sr. Database and Application Administrator with 10,001+ employees
Right now, the tool you use to query the system updates every month. It pesters you to update the Client every month when there is nothing new that you really need to add, but it is constantly pestering you. I do not care for it.
View full review »it_user143286
Senior IT Consultant/Program Mgmt at Consultant
When reviewing SQL processes it would be great if all of the local processes on the SQL server were marshaled to a remote SSMS client.
View full review »
HG
reviewer1595568
Technical Content Writer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
MongoDB is a bit better. A traditional database system, like the SQL Server, is failing to catch up.
You need an experienced person to use that piece of technology so that you can store everything in a logical manner. We'd like it to be easier to store in a logical manner.
The scalability could be better.
View full review »MO
Manjunatha OK
Marketo Consultant at Webtech software servies
SQL Server could improve by providing something similar to an interface or dashboard where a developer can do debugging, this would make a developer's work easier. Additionally, the optimization could be better. If there was an interface showing information needed for the optimization it would help because there can be some data loss making it difficult to optimize the SQL Server.
View full review »MR
Menoj-Roekalea
Cloud DBA at UNIT4
I would like a mature real-monitoring built in into SSMS, even a trace file analyzer.
View full review »AK
reviewer977976
System Architect, SCRUM Product Owner at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
SQL Server could improve by having better usability or user guidance.
View full review »it_user408555
Technical lead/Senior embedded software engineer at a wireless company with 51-200 employees
- The Server Objects area of SQL Server Management Studio
- The SQL Server Configuration Manager
it_user4524
Founder & Principal Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
- Ease of installation means that anyone can install it, but many do not perform the steps required to properly maintain the data
- The increasing cost of the platform is slowing adoption by the SMB space
View full review »
DK
reviewer1314546
Senior Systems Engineer at a energy/utilities company with 201-500 employees
They need to improve their support. It should be faster.
View full review »SY
cto267069
CTO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The solution is expensive. The licensing costs are high.
View full review »PS
reviewer1643577
Project Manager at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
For small-scale businesses, Microsoft could improve by removing some limits in SQL Express.
In the future, it would be a benefit to have web-based management capabilities.
View full review »RS
reviewer1309482
Business Analytics Manager at a transportation company with 201-500 employees
It's night and day if you compare it to Oracle, and I am an Oracle fan.
Their datatypes need improvement. The SQL Server language in itself, its datatypes, seem like they are stuck in the eighties. Even companies that work with an SQL Server, experts on J.D. Edwards that sits on SQL Server that handles all the data transformation, they've actually converted the SQL Server datatypes so that they are more useful and easy to handle on their solutions. That tells you right then and there that their datatypes must improve.
When you run your SQL optimizer there, on the datatypes, it's very costly because it's just this level of conversion that needs to happen as opposed to just calling it numeric, or as opposed to calling it something else. Their datatypes technically work. If you know what you're doing, it really can give you all that. However, on the optimization side, on the performance side, it does struggle.
The datatype conversion to push my data to an enterprise data warehouse is difficult. I can tell you Oracle data is so much easier to ingest into it and it easier than doing it on a SQL Server.
There are many issues that I face when I'm pulling data straight from a SQL Server agent. There are more collections that I need to do or handle before it hits my target table. I noticed that due to the fact that I've been working on different databases and ingesting everything in a data warehouse. It just doesn't flow properly.
Even on their SQL Studios, that Master Studio tools, even if you try to do your conversions on their own, even though this is their native tool, you're always going to have some problems and it's always going to give you some type of error. It is just difficult to tell you what the error will be. You have to dig in and figure it out. Most of that is due to datatypes. It's just not easy. It's like pulling teeth. Especially if you have had experience using a tool, like Oracle, that is just not that painful.
There seems to be a lot of patching, which leads me to believe there may often be stability issues.
View full review »it_user525360
Enterprise Programmes Architect at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
- It does not scale up to a truly global environment. We operate in 220+ countries and territories with data services centralized in three data centers. The ability for MS SQL to operate in this environment is a challenge for anything spanning regions or having a global footprint.
- It is best suited to supporting a single functional instance by business domain or a single country.
- MS needs to work better at the WAN implementations transoceanic.
- It also needs to have a less closed or less MS centric tool dependency as integration with other databases and non-MS development environments is always problematic.
it_user272976
Managing Director at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The web interface and the command line interface could be better so we could manage and build some things around an API. If we could build our own solution, our own interface, and then manage the solution through that open API, that would be better.
View full review »it_user718458
Corporate Data and BI Lead - Database Administrator at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Indexing, execution plans, and the SQL Server Management Studio performance.
View full review »it_user284160
Freelance at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The compiler should be much more precise and give you more information about the error.
View full review »it_user103896
Sales Engineer at a tech consulting company with 11-50 employees
The Management Studio front end still needs work as does Indexing.
View full review »
it_user5520
Network Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
For each additional core feature you want to add to your DBMS edition, it is more money. This is not a FREE program as most other DBMS are. So basically, the more you want, the more you pay.
View full review »
AJ
Abaso Jadhav
Data Analyst
The way SQL Server pivots data could be improved. For example, I would like built-in comma-separated pivot and unpivot functions.
View full review »JP
reviewer1561038
Chief Technology Officer at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
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.
View full review »EK
reviewer1601793
Sr Lead Data & Information Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
It would definitely be better if SQL Server were free.
View full review »DS
reviewer1430925
Technical Director at a security firm with 51-200 employees
It would be nice if they can reduce its price.
View full review »EN
reviewer1564890
Head of Data Analytics at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
I think the scalability of the database could be improved if it could handle increased volumes of data. I'd also like to see improvement in performance when you are loading big amounts of data. Integration with other solutions would be a nice additional feature.
View full review »GV
reviewer1476273
Manager with 501-1,000 employees
It will be very useful to have high-level database monitoring. It should also have built-in business intelligence reporting.
View full review »YW
Yasin Bin Wasim
Information Security Engineer at a security firm with 11-50 employees
I would like to see more integration with other products and it needs to be more secure.
View full review »VS
Victor Sokolov
DWH Architect at B2BSoft
We would like to have a common storage option in the SQL Server. This option is available in Oracle Database. It would be great if Microsoft could create something like a columnstore that has not only indexing but also tables for common storage.
View full review »RS
Rahul Kumar Singh
Software Developer at OATI
- Third-party services from Redgate should be built-in to it, like SQL Search.
- Debugging from the debugger tool functionality should be enhanced.
DM
DenisMunger
Chief of Engineering at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
- Only one CPU core can be used
- Can’t move a database between servers easily
- Can’t use triggers
The free version is cumbersome to use and maintain. But $5000 for a licence is more expense than the benefit I would get from a licensed version.
it_user117381
Lead Software Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
As a software developer, it can be hard to do something in Oracle that is SQL Server specific, and vice-versa, sometimes.
Improvements must not be stopped and must not end. When business needs arrive, then the improvements follow. For example, 15-20 years ago, MySQL did not have built-in Stored Procedure support; there was no business need for MySQL to have stored procedures built-in.
JI
reviewer1707912
System Analyst and Team Lead at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The solution could improve by having more integration with other operating systems and other platforms.
View full review »RP
reviewer1362969
IT Specialist at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
It would be better if it had more integration with other systems.
View full review »PF
Paul Fijma
Engineer / MS SQL DBA at Solvinity
Improvements to the indexing, columnstore indexing, and high availability groups are good improvements for future versions.
it_user369171
Brazil IT Coordinator at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Table partition and memory management. The performance could be better.
View full review »it_user308226
SAP NetWeaver Implementer at a tech services company
The speed is inconsistent.
View full review »FK
Faruk Kutlu
Managing Partner at Veribir Ltd
The solution could improve by being more user-friendly.
View full review »
Anteneh Asnake
Modern Data Center and Cloud Engineer II at IE Network Solutions PLC
The performance could improve.
View full review »CM
reviewer1489908
Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
For now, we've found the features to be sufficient. I cannot recall feeling anything is actually missing.
The pricing of the product could be better. They could make it more reasonable or more competitive.
Microsoft's technical support could be better.
View full review »IF
reviewer1593270
CEO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
There is room for improvement in performance when managing a large quality of data and a high number of active users.
View full review »
Girish Kumar.
Consultant at Botmantra
I would like to see the integration with other platforms improved in the future.
View full review »it_user493200
Pre-Sales/System Architect at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
MS SQL need to improve the big data functions and also own market share.
View full review »AA
reviewer1556808
ASM at a healthcare company with 51-200 employees
Performance could be better. But I don't know if it's a problem with my application or with my database. Maybe it can have the capability, but I may not be using it to the extent that it could be used, or the configuration is not as per the standard.
View full review »RP
reviewer1288086
Project manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
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.
it_user125703
Management Trainee for Training at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Overall, trying to make over with Oracle, it can be improved in usage for high data migration companies of large scale.
View full review »it_user359604
Web Content Editor at a consumer goods company with 501-1,000 employees
Access validation rules and expressions need improvement while converting into SQL Server.
View full review »SK
reviewer1491816
Senior Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
The performance could be better. When we pump in millions of records, we start struggling, and that's why we want improvement in those areas.
View full review »WL
reviewer1484775
Senior Programmer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The licensing costs are very high.
I would like the scaling process to be more transparent and obvious.
There's a lot of documentation on the web, and it is quite extensive, and yet it isn't very well organized which makes it hard to find items often.
View full review »GA
GhamdanAl-Anesi
Member of the Board & Co-Founder, Executive Manager at Networld Systems
I would like to have more replication scenarios.
View full review »it_user280197
BI Solution Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
The user interface to the web frontend of MDS could be more intuitive and the Analysis Services platform has not evolved much in recent times, these are the two things that come to mind.
View full review »it_user118071
Engineer at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees
- Few in SSIS
- Realtime data refresh in SSRS
- More datasources in Power BI
it_user165207
Infrastructure Analyst / Engineer (24x7) at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
The user interface can be improved through the adoption of the intuitive interaction design of the MS Office 2013 applications.
View full review »SA
Shafeeq Ahamed
Enterprise Solutions Department Manager at Smart Vision
The time series database could be improved. There needs to be more storage space for large documents.
The user interface and the reporting could also be improved. It's not bad, but it could be improved upon.
View full review »MG
reviewer1546989
CEO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
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.
View full review »SS
reviewer1085256
Software Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Better integration with other platforms would be an improvement.
View full review »it_user540858
IT Technician / Support Supervisor at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees
From a DB administrator perspective, I would like to see more space requirements and space capacity history, so that we are able to see which DBs are growing, and by how much per day or week.
View full review »it_user585195
DBA de Desenvolvimento at a tech services company
Better execution plans and better debugging.
Improved dependency of use of temporary tables to reach good performance in complex SQL.
View full review »it_user231318
Associate Consultant with 501-1,000 employees
- SSRS should have more capabilities in terms of more ad hoc reporting
- SSAS multi-dimensional expression queries should be more simple
it_user135978
Developer at a retailer with 501-1,000 employees
There is always some place for improvements. Statistics could be better (2 table statistic), or dynamic partition function, but that is probably true with every other product.
View full review »
SA
reviewer1680246
Chief Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The solution could improve by having better integration.
View full review »it_user285990
Service Operations Manager at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Improvement to synchronous replication. Currently Microsoft's Always-On implementation of synchronous replication is not truly synchronous, as it counts the data to be written to the slave node, when it is written to the LDF file, not when it is committed to the actual database. This cause a problem when you are load balancing transactions across synchronous nodes.
View full review »it_user3876
Database Manager at a tech company with 51-200 employees
• 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.
View full review »
CL
reviewer1410678
Data Analyst at a tech company with 51-200 employees
The installation process should be simplified.
The configuration could be easier.
View full review »it_user6414
CEO at a tech company with 51-200 employees
• SQL Server work best with Windows Operating System and it is not compatible with some other systems hence limiting its platform friendliness.
• Advance versions with higher functionality such as Work Group Edition have high installation requirement such as multi-processor computers, larger primary memory and are not open source.
View full review »
it_user941640
Systems Analyst Developer with 1-10 employees
It would be nice to search for specific value across multiple tables. This would save a lot of time.
View full review »KH
reviewer1517148
Program Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
In my experience, I've found that scalability can be improved.
View full review »it_user252576
Business Intelligence and Decision Support Team Leader at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Version management, editor capabilities, CDC (change date capture), and some advanced analytic functions should be added; continuous integration solutions.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
SQL Server
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about SQL Server. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Buyer's Guide
Download our free SQL Server Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2024
Product Categories
Relational Databases ToolsPopular Comparisons
Microsoft Power BI
Tableau
Oracle Database
MySQL
MariaDB
SAP HANA
Teradata
IBM Cognos
IBM Db2 Database
Vertica
QlikView
Amazon Aurora
TIBCO Spotfire
LocalDB
SAP BW4HANA
Buyer's Guide
Download our free SQL Server Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros
sharing their opinions.
Quick Links
Learn More:
- Primary Use Case
- Valuable Features
- Room for Improvement
- Customer Service and Support
- Initial Setup
- ROI
- Pricing
- Other Advice
- Microsoft sql2017 VS SAP Hana
- SQL Server 2005 vs. InfoBright - what are the pros and cons of these solutions?
- SQL Server 2012 - can I make OLTP transactions from my ERP run in memory?
- How does NuoDB compare to MySQL and SQL Server?
- What are the main architectural differences between Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Multitenant?
- Would you say the price of SQL Server is high compared to that of similar products?
- Has using SQL Server helped your organization in any way?
- Which authentication mode is best for SQL Server?
- Which solution do you prefer: Microsoft SQL Server's enterprise edition or Oracle Database's enterprise edition?
- Which is better: SQL Server or SAP HANA?
