One of the most valuable features is partitioning because it helps to distribute the workload. Consider that you sell 400,000 or 500,000 items each day, and there are 10 years worth of history stored in the data warehouse. That is a lot of transactions. Partitioning allows you to split it up into smaller pieces so that the machine can be easily deal with it.

By default, SQL Server has relatively poor partitioning, and it only works properly if you buy the Enterprise Edition, which costs about $14,000 USD per core. Partitioning was only introduced in 2005 and because we were working with it from before that time, we had to do partitioning manually. With Standard Edition, the list price is $3,700 per core. So we still do partitioning manually.

With SQL Server SE, for a $50,000 USD or so license, we can get a 16 core server and manage data warehouses in the 15-20TB range. It runs really well.

By comparison, we had a large telecom client in 2004. We used an 18CPU Sun Server running Oracle and 15TB of EMC disk. That cost us nearly $2.5 million USD. Nowadays, we can do a great deal of what we did back then with $100,000 USD. This is amazing because in places like Eastern Europe where you have constrained budgets SE is a really good option. It's actually cheaper than running MySQL.

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It's evolved over the years. It's become a truly useful enterprise situation and an enterprise tool. The amount of data that it can contain is significant.

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It is secure, and it is fast. For our present database size, we are using the Always-On feature on SQL Server so that our transactions are replicated among three servers. If one server goes down, we can find the data from other servers. We have benefited from this feature.

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We are using in-house ERP. Currently, we are using SQL for different projects, like surveys and documentation. The data are stored in SQL, which is our main database.

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This solution has helped our organization by providing a backbone for our SAP. We would not be able to operate without it.

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I am in the process of creating a data strategy to consolidate multiple siloed data centers. Once my plan is finalized and approved, then we are going to execute it on the Microsoft platform.

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We were using SQL Server as a major database in our organization. We partitioned the data in such a way for a more extended period, and our archival process may manage that.

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It's consolidated all of our Microsoft Access databases.

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Helping to effectively and efficiently manage the business-critical data

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We use SQL Server to support Business Intelligence. It also connects with Power BI. We create all our views and datasets in SQL, specifically for Power BI. Previously, we used Tableau but transitioned to Power BI for all our analytics needs.

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SQL Server is a backend for software products that our company writes and distributes.

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We assist companies to improve the performance of their servers. We're generally able to improve performance by 40%. 

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It offers exceptional performance and robust stability, ensuring a highly secure environment.

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This is the heart of the whole company. SQL Server is where all of our financials are. It has all of our data.

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The entire solution that we're deploying is built on Microsoft SQL Server as a database engine. Our solution is completely engineered for that, and if we attempt to deploy it in any other database engine, it is going to be a huge nightmare.

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The product helps me tune the transactional language with the databases of our organization.

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The use of a solution with SQL Server has helped standardize how we import, store, and report data. It is a standard that many applications use so we are able to buy pre-made solutions instead of having to develop a solution and the data can be moved from application to application easily.

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We have end-computing devices with a server-client type of model. We have a server. All terminals are dumb terminals, but they get connectivity from SQL Server, and it has worked really well. We operate in difficult locations, such as Mombasa in Kenya and Mozambique in Maputo, where power is a big problem. Instead of desktop computers, we went for thin end-computing clients, and it worked really well with SQL Server.

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In an effort to forego a data warehouse purchase, one company I worked with used a second SQL Server instance loaded to separate hardware as a reporting environment avoiding the need to hire additional employees to support a data warehouse. Essentially, the production database was snapshot and copied nightly to the reporting instance where it was restored through automated processes.

All employees who wrote queries and reports against the reporting instance utilized the same knowledge, skillset and tools already used in the OLTP production environment. While it didn’t have all the abilities of a true data warehouse, it was quickly implemented and well served for the desired purpose.

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It saves time. Our data is also a lot more secure. Prior to SQL Server, things were run in a flat-file database that required a ton more maintenance to keep it running. SQL Server is pretty much bulletproof. It just runs.

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Because we are using the solution from an analytics perspective, the performance is good. We have a large amount of information in our dashboard. The data navigation could be improved.

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Most of the application what we use today are SQL-based applications. If you take a Microsoft ecosystem, there are many tools that connect easily with SQL - especially when it comes to reporting and analytics. Power BI is one of the good examples which can easily connect to SQL and then you can pull any report you want. SQL itself has its own tools like reporting services and transformation services. It also helps you to generate reporting and analytics and data transformation.

Overall, it helps our organization a lot. Again, it depends on what requirements and company has, and for what purpose you are using it. However, from an application relational database point of view that we are using today, it helps due to the fact that it comes with all that we need. Also, from a performance point of view, it configures well.

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It's serving our data solution needs okay. 

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Microsoft database is very user friendly. This new version of SQL Server continues to meet these twin demands. It adds new features from the worlds of data science and NoSQL. It offers cross-platform capabilities and Docker container compatibility. But it also reinforces its investment in core database engine performance, ease of index maintenance, high availability, and data warehouse performance. That's a difficult balance and one that other database vendors don't have to meet. While this may be Microsoft's cross to bear, the company does pretty well with it, turning a formidable challenge into a positive market differentiator.

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The tool helps us by being available always. 

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SQL is the all around leading Database server

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SQL Server is cost effective in multiple ways - both the cost of software and the cost of the resource. Meaning, how many resources do we have and what is their expertise level? How easily can they use the SQL Servers or can I use any of the software? Do I need to hire somebody else from the outside to work on the cost?

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The MSBI features SSAS, SSIS as well as SSRS together has enabled us to build a data warehouse for our Enterprise with Business Intelligence reports around the data. We have fully exploited its all complex features like Slowly Changing Dimensions in SSIS etc.

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This is a simple to deploy, own, and manage RDMS.

Skills and support for this product are widely available. The security and vulnerability management are well-managed through the vendor. Lifecycles are greatly improved in recent releases, to make upgrades easier.

A license buys enterprise-grade data integration, reporting, and analytical capabilities as well.

It has broad adoption and support for integration with leading software brands such as SAP and Sage.

Data availability and security is well taken care of for the enterprise and is the backbone of first-class business continuity plans.

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It's helped us connect to our company's machines.

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The most recent example is a data warehouse I've created for a client that enables us to use a "no-SQL" construct. This is only possible due to the dynamic SQL capability.

Our client collects data from dozens of sources with little to no commonality between them. With other platforms, this would require a table for each data source. However, because of the dynamic SQL, we have three tables that will accommodate ANY data source and it will never require us to change the data warehouse schema.

As a result, maintenance is virtually zero.

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I don't have access to that level of knowledge. We just basically work with it on a small scale capacity in our department. That type of information and statistics are held by our IT administrators.

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The organization was deploying SQL before I came to it, so I assume whoever selected this type of technology was really happy with it.

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SQL Server suffices our main requirement of a small database, and it is also very cost-effective.

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I am not sure, as we have been working with it from the start. Comparing with other database management systems that I tried in other companies, SQL Server is quite easy to install, configure, and maintain. It is also quite reliable in cluster configurations and has helped me to reduce downtime and improve SLAs. If backups and alerts are configured properly, I can also rely on my restoration plan saving my butt more than once. 

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In a manufacturing system, storing test data in an Excel file has limitations in how much data can be stored at one time and how many people can manipulate the data at one time. Storing it in SQL Server allows you to store as much data as you have disk space for. It can be viewed and modified by multiple people at one time.

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We have deployed three instances of the SQL Server, i.e., two at the primary datacenter and one at the disaster recovery facility. The AlwaysOn feature has ensured 100% database availability, even when one of the servers is down without any performance issues for the end user.

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The solution has provided our clients with some valuable data feeds.

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In the current organisation there was no centralised data repository. Thus, statistics, reporting, and generic management information were not existent. With the introduction of SQL Server, we have consolidated relevant business data into one main repository. We built reporting structures and analytics on top of the repository to help analysts and teams manage themselves, as well as provide management information. From basic or incomplete reports and statistics, we moved to a full reporting data structure, providing a holistic view of the organisation's data.

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This solution acts as the backbone of most IT services. It is essential for us to use it.

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We use it as part of our product, so it is helpful for us. It is easy to move data across versions, and it holds lots of our internal data for operations.

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Our backend and core systems are using Microsoft SQL Server. We have no complaints from anyone who is using it.

We have nothing that we can compare it with.

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We have many users, between 50 and 100 using the SQL Server product.

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Implementing a unified, reliable database is one of the main improvements of departments whose business is to make decisions according their aggregated data. SQL Server, with the services it offers, has the full capability to manage this goal.

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SQL Server has helped us make better decisions through the queries that we have built.

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We are a professional services company, so we use SQL Server to help our clients achieve their goals. Our clients use SQL Server 2016 for their most demanding mission critical systems, for data warehouses, and big data solutions.

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We're able to easily upscale previous systems to provide an efficient interface for our internal clients to do their jobs effectively.

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It provides the ability to create an end-to-end automated BI platform through data management and provisioning, transformation and publication.

Data platform development process improvement: Integrating the features of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server data projects for SQL Server development. Allows for smooth operation between development environments in conjunction with an agile process to release database changes.

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We design and implement DW solutions with SS 2016 Dev Ed tools. This solution has given us high levels of productivity, which has allowed us to use an Agile approach to the design and implementation of DW solutions for our customers, and this Agile approach has in turn given us a competitive advantage in our market.

We have also started exploring the use of Microsoft R Client, MS R Services and MS R Server with SQL Server 2016 Dev Ed, which are part of the hosted Data Science package.

We are also looking forward the inclusion of Python support in SQL Server 2017 for said hosted Data Science package.

We are very interested in complementing DW solutions with Data Science and Machine Learning solutions, which could be a major plus for our existing DW customers, even though all hosted data science tools are only available in Enterprise Ed (for our customers), which again presents the same limiting factor (budget) already mentioned.

Having said that, we see that the potential that the hosted Data Science tools offer to some of our customers is large enough to be explored and considered on a case by case basis, with proper ROI analysis.

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There is improvement in the performances and stability.

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We design and implement data warehouse solutions with SQL Server 2016 Developer Edition tools. This solution has:

Given us high levels of productivity

Allowed us to use an agile approach to the design and implementation of data warehouse solutions for our customers

Given us a competitive advantage in our market

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We are familiar with Microsoft products and bringing another Microsoft product was a very easy transition.

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• Used to create queries
• Implemented store procedures
• DBA can also use this effectively. 
• Reduces other manual work.

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It is easy to establish, and the license price is lower than that of Oracle.  

Otherwise, our customer could can replace primary databases from Oracle into MSSQL AG

Base on  windows cluster,  the always on no needs complicated config process.

Just click and click following  GUI interface.

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It allows me to obtain access to data that I would not otherwise obtain access to from different programs. It has helped pull statistics and data, then put it into a report form to do some Power BI on it. This really helps people above me to view what we are doing, how we are doing it, and how to improve it.

Overall, it just makes your job simpler.

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After reviewing a client's Microsft SQL environment, I have been able to setup specifics alerts and jobs in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to definitely show them where they are experiencing network latency, disk latency, memory pressure, etc., etc.  I have done this type of performance review for over 20 clients in the last 5 years View full review »

Besides that, SQL Server has become very expensive like Oracle. Its stability delivers performance and usability.

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I am a Senior Software Engineer. I've used SQL Server for most of the solutions that I worked with, from web crawlers to logistic platforms and medical devices.

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The solution works. It does what you need it to do.

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It is cost effective with easy integration into the core MS Office tools. Hence user adoption is easy. Also, being a commodity product there is an abundance of cheap resources having experience with the toolkit, but very few senior or truly expert support personnel are available. Again because it is viewed as a commodity product even by developers, no serious time is spent on skills development with this toolkit.

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It's a very capable, efficient, price-performant OLAP server on which we can build our solutions.

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It provides the best performance and an easy way to monitor and troubleshoot problems.

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It improved the efficiency in giving service to clients, and allowed to me make all kinds of important reports easily.

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Security, lower cost, ease of maintenance and administration, performance. When all of these are considered, our business is able to run faster, more securely, with SQL as the back-end. View full review »

• SQL Server has maintained my database problem in an arranged manner.
• SQL Server Profiler makes finding and debugging easy.
• Support for third-party tools, like SQL Search.

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There was an online system in which we had about 2500 requests to the DB per second. Every request had a completion window of one second to process and retrieve data. Before my arrival, the numbers were 1000 requests per second and two, and sometimes, three to five seconds spent per request.

After switching to SQL Server, and AlwaysOn, and Snapshot, and tinkering, and configuring and tinkering, the handling capacity we measured increased to about 5000 requests per second, while the time decreased to 0.5 seconds per request.

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As an engineer working for multiple organisations, MS SQL has proven stability and operational power.

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The SQL Server is helping us with the most feared corporate problem: Excel spreadsheets. The individual user can perform an integration and share the same results with others without the necessity to "share" the file. This reduces the data traffic on my company network.

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It cuts down on the variable speed of queries, and individual queries can be tuned by optimizing the database server.

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MS SQL is a recognized data tool, it provides many ways to help us organize data and process information.

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We used this to solve many complex problems.

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We migrated loads of access database into large scale SQL server.

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It helped reduce licensing costs and also running costs, as well as the learning curve.

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As an IT Services organization, our companies have used this product in dozens of customer deliveries for solutions such as ERP applications, Data and Analytics solutions, and more. We also use the product internally as the backend for some of our most important operational systems.

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It has High Availability, therefore provides failover if a node becomes unavailable.

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The majority of the software frameworks utilised by companies I have supported use SQL Server by Microsoft as the application's database management system. It always been reliable and consistent providing tremendous functionality for many years. 

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All our main DBs run on SQL.

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The product is used in the core systems. It has been used since the beginning.

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It has enhanced our real time decision making capabilities. It ensures we are up to date regarding our customers buying behaviour.

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Can't imagine work without sql database. I have complete warehouse logic inside stored procedure and it works like a charm. It is installed in 20 companies with different warehouse types. View full review »

SQL Server is our main RDBMS for SIS (Student Information System) and also our DWH, which are hosted on our SQL Server.

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