November 1, 2018 at 9:14 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The SQL Twilight Zone
November 2, 2018 at 2:40 am
When you move away from SQL Server you realise just what a fantastic product it is, how good the query optimiser is, its integration with a wide toolset, the ease of recruiting good staff. Yes, it is costly but I'd like to think it gives ROI. The SQL Server Community is also something rather special.
There are many great DB products out there but they tend to fill niches while claiming to be generic.
If you choose a NOSQL product it might be brilliant as an operational data store but lousy when attempting to provide a BI solution. The advantages you get from NOSQL may be bled away when it comes to data integration with other systems.
If you move away from SQL Server you might not have the equivalent of stored procedures in your new system. What I wouldn't give for that facility in Vertica. You will have to find an ETL tool to replace SSIS. If you use SSAS then again, you will need an alternative. SSRS I'm not so worried about. Then there's the HADR question and what do you do about job scheduling?
Replication comes in for a lot of criticism but Publisher/Distributor/Subscriber is far more flexible than master/slave, if you even have that! If you use replication and/or service broker you are going to have to find a replacement for that as well.
The more you dig into what you currently use in SQL Server the more things you will either have to do without or find a replacement for and then get the whole shooting match to play nicely together. Good luck with that, you are going to need it.
Then there is DBA expertise. A DBA might look after SQL Server and all its components and features but once it has gone you will have a fragmented set of technologies that probably require a wider group of people to manage them. If you are not careful you end up with both a fragmented toolset and a fragmented group of people.
If you are a fan or the Redgate tools it really hurts when you lose SQL Prompt, SQL Compare and SQL Data Compare.
I've found that I have to think far harder when optimising queries. A query at which SQL server wouldn't blink might struggle on another platform and need completely rewriting and sometimes that rewrite is counter intuitive.
I short, SQL Server has a big ticket price but its mostly visible and up-front. When you start digging into open-source it has a low entry cost but after that it is death by 1000 cuts.
November 2, 2018 at 3:03 am
iOS.
November 2, 2018 at 3:29 am
I don't want to switch to another one, so maybe I'd apply for something totally different. I don't know, National Park Ranger. (Obviously that would pay a lot less.)
November 2, 2018 at 4:44 am
I'm essentially a developer and I changed jobs just over 7 years ago. In the previous role, I worked with SQL Server and, due to the size and nature of the company and customers, I was often involved in a DBA-type role, creating instances, setting up backup routines, performance tuning, etc. In my current role, I work with Oracle. We have a DBA and, while I still get involved in writing and tuning queries, creating packages, etc. I've never created or backed-up a database.
Oracle has some nice features but I do miss the easy way that you can return result sets from functions and stored procedures in SQL Server.
November 2, 2018 at 5:28 am
My company decided 2 years ago to phase out our SQL Servers due to costs. At first I was devastated with the decision, and thought I'd need to leave the company. We have been going with Postgres instances on AWS, and also using Databricks with Spark/Scala/Python for ETL to Snowflake databases for reporting with Tableau. It has been a major learning curve but I love it, especially working with Scala and Spark within Databricks notebooks. Very powerful stuff.
Bottom line: you can move on, especially if this old dog can learn new tricks.
November 2, 2018 at 7:32 am
I've been an Oracle and SQL Server DBA for over 10 years and I'd definitely say that I would miss the SQL Server community, but would continue on with Oracle. I've noticed a clear difference in the two over the years. There are some great individuals in the Oracle community, but as they say, it's a #sqlfamily with SQL Server. I also prefer the more casual, laid back atmosphere of the SQL Server community.
November 2, 2018 at 8:19 am
I had this happen to me about 8 years ago. I spent 5 years in the wilderness of ITIL Process implementation, and ITIL Incident Management, along with Windows admin. I came back to databases not in SQL, but supporting Cache. It was a totally different world, but I adapted. I now support Cache and SQL both, and they both have their benefits.
November 2, 2018 at 9:24 am
Walking mailman.
November 2, 2018 at 11:53 am
Life before SQL Server was as a software engineer (which I still do to a small extent). I'd probably go back to that but I'd also be very tempted to spend a lot more time working in my friend's recording studio and ditch the corporate world.
November 2, 2018 at 11:56 am
I do have a history with Oracle, but it's been quite a number of years since I've worked with it so I'd probably have to relearn a bunch of stuff. I do have to agree though that PostgreSQL is very intriguing, and a project that I've admired for several years. I was never that impressed with MySQL / MariaDB, I had tinkered with FireBird SQL for a while but mainly because I also have some experience with InterBase (which FireBird is branched off of when InterBase was temporarily open source) PostgreSQL was always more advanced, and there's even a company that has used it for a platform that can act as an Oracle replacement.
November 2, 2018 at 12:10 pm
My first choice would definitely be a return to PostgreSQL. I spent close to 10 years working with it in previous jobs before coming to my current company, where we're just wrapping up a migration from MySQL to SQL Server -- and thank goodness I no longer have to deal with MySQL! PostgreSQL is feature-rich these days, and standards-aware (unlike MySQL), with one of the best developer / user communities I've seen for an open source project.
Barring that, I'd pick up whatever technology I needed to; I started as a developer and have drifted toward more and more DBA work over the past decade. One of the most useful skills over that time has been writing code in languages I've never used before -- Google and Stack Overflow make that so much easier than it used to be! Perl, Python, Ruby, Javascript...whatever there are jobs in, I'll pick up.
November 2, 2018 at 1:30 pm
Rod at work - Friday, November 2, 2018 8:18 AMSteve, what do you mean by, "In today's SQL twilight zone..."?
The rest of the sentence: imagine you can't work with SQL Server any longer.
November 2, 2018 at 3:08 pm
PostgreSQL ... because it would be more of linear change. Same thing, different pile/stack 🙂
However, I saw a presentation recently on using Keras neural networking to get started in image classification. (https://keras.io/) Wow ... fascinating ... and so easy to jump into !! I've been going to PASS meetings for almost 10 years now and have learned a lot, but its always kinda the same things. So I started going to Data Science meetups in my area as well, just to see what else is going on in the world. Apparently there's a lot !!
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