SQL Server Review

Last updated: October 3 2024

SQL Server is an excellent relational database from Microsoft. I default to using PostgreSQL because it is also very good… and free! But if money was no object, I’d default to using SQL Server for most use cases.

Pros

• It has columnstore indexes, which allows SQL Server to double as a respectable data warehouse.
• It has the ability to keep performance sensitive tables entirely in memory.
• It is fast, safe, reliable, and has a lot of online learning resources.
• It is readily available as a Docker image or through Microsoft’s official download page.
• It has an excellent ecosystem of first party tools, such as SSMS, SSIS, SQL Server Profiler, SSDT, SSRS, SSAS, and SQL Server Agent.
• SQL Server is very popular and a lot of people know it well. This makes it relatively easy to recruit for.

Cons

• It is expensive. I have had conversations with IT managers at Fortune 500 companies who spend millions of dollars per year on SQL Server licenses. Phew.
• The SQL Server documentation is fine, but it is not a masterpiece of technical writing like the PostgreSQL documentation. Yes maybe I’m being dramatic. I don’t care. @me.
• SQL Server is not open-source, so it doesn’t have an extension ecosystem like PostgreSQL.
• The PostGIS extension makes PostgreSQL much more popular than SQL Server for geospatial use cases.