January 20, 2015 at 9:25 am
We are like others not upgrading from SQL 2008R2 because of the cost. We'll soon be evaluating products for replacing in house systems and it being MS SQL based is no longer much of a consideration.
January 20, 2015 at 9:28 am
david.gugg (1/20/2015)
We're on 2008 R2 Enterprise at my shop and we've cancelled plans to upgrade to 2012 because of the costs. Once Microsoft stops supporting 2008 R2 I believe we'll be looking for a different RDBMS. It's too bad because I love working in SQL Server, but $26K for a database license just doesn't work for a small business with ~50 employees.
Or you'll run R2 for the foreseeable future because it works. Still have people I know on SQL 2000.
January 20, 2015 at 9:30 am
Eric M Russell (1/20/2015)
I'm sure the folks in Microsofts accounting department took Econ 101 while in university. If enterprise level customers keep switching to other database platforms primarily on the basis of SQL Server Enterprise Edition licensing costs, then I expect we'll see changes to that in near future. In the meantime, keep letting them know why you're switching.
Yes, please let them know.
January 20, 2015 at 9:35 am
For those of you concerned about costs, if you paid by the CPU/RAM instead of standard/enterprise, would that work?
Let's say that it was something like $800/core and $100/8GB of RAM. That way a 4core x 64GB RAM is $4000, roughly standard cost. A 64 core x 1024GB RAM is about $50k.
January 20, 2015 at 9:39 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (1/20/2015)
david.gugg (1/20/2015)
We're on 2008 R2 Enterprise at my shop and we've cancelled plans to upgrade to 2012 because of the costs. Once Microsoft stops supporting 2008 R2 I believe we'll be looking for a different RDBMS. It's too bad because I love working in SQL Server, but $26K for a database license just doesn't work for a small business with ~50 employees.Or you'll run R2 for the foreseeable future because it works. Still have people I know on SQL 2000.
Perhaps if conventions started featuring a session titled "Why we're thinking about breaking up with SQL Server", it will get Microsoft's attention.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
January 20, 2015 at 10:40 am
david.gugg (1/20/2015)
We're on 2008 R2 Enterprise at my shop and we've cancelled plans to upgrade to 2012 because of the costs. Once Microsoft stops supporting 2008 R2 I believe we'll be looking for a different RDBMS. It's too bad because I love working in SQL Server, but $26K for a database license just doesn't work for a small business with ~50 employees.
Same situation with me, same version, same employee count, same sticker shock.
January 20, 2015 at 11:41 am
Perhaps if conventions started featuring a session titled "Why we're thinking about breaking up with SQL Server", it will get Microsoft's attention.
This would never get past the organizers, nor PASS.
From my view point FREE and OPEN SOURCE translates into more hours spent in development. Most of the time it is to create the same functionality that already exists.
That depends on the situation. (How much OSS have you done?) Many people are using SQL Server as simple RDBMS. This isn't rocket surgery and there are alternatives. Especially when you start talking hundreds of thousands of real money to be spent on licenses. Then you start weighing total costs across a lifetime.
January 20, 2015 at 1:30 pm
Eric M Russell (1/20/2015)
I'm sure the folks in Microsofts accounting department took Econ 101 while in university. If enterprise level customers keep switching to other database platforms primarily on the basis of SQL Server Enterprise Edition licensing costs, then I expect we'll see changes to that in near future. In the meantime, keep letting them know why you're switching.
Unfortunately they seem to be more impressed with (ego fueled) Larry Ellison's approach with Oracle than with the concept of competitive pricing/features.
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
January 21, 2015 at 7:38 am
First off - the features to be included and the eventual selling price are set by the marketing department & brand management. I've never seen a company where the accounting department makes those decisions - they just get blamed.
But, it appears that MS is now justing using SQL Server as a cash cow (you can look up the marketing term). And thus, I fear, that SQL Server is now in a death spiral. I've been creating SQL Server systems since 1995, and this is a hard trend to accept. They are moving away from supporting small and mid-sized companies & departments, whom in the past were the driving force behind SQL Server.
Yes, moving to PostgreSQL may be initially difficult (and unfortunately, I do not know it that well), but MS seems to be pushing everyone out the door. Unless you are in their cloud.
Steve, perhaps as the point person for SSC, you can start a petition (or similar) to MS to wake up. I'd like to think that with a user base over 1 million users might have some impact.
The more you are prepared, the less you need it.
January 22, 2015 at 6:52 am
I've been surprised by the cost of some NOSQL solutions. By the time you do the sizing and capacity piece plus DR the costs can be considerably more than anticipated.
The various software editions for any vendor is just a basic way of selling a product for what people are prepared to pay. They can rationalise back based on the additional features that are must haves.
Partitioning and compression are particularly useful features.
January 22, 2015 at 9:44 am
Andrew..Peterson (1/21/2015)
Steve, perhaps as the point person for SSC, you can start a petition (or similar) to MS to wake up. I'd like to think that with a user base over 1 million users might have some impact.
They don't listen to me, nor to the crowd here. We barely got SPs back, and even now they release them with gritted teeth. They'd rather work on some half baked feature, charge more, and abandon it in 2 versions when it doesn't sell.
I don't think SQL is in a death spiral. I've heard that about DB2 and Oracle for years with their prices, and it doesn't happen. What I do think is that all of the major platforms are going to see market share shrink over time and lots of alternatives will come along and be used. For so many of the applications out there, simple stores, or simple DB stores, do the job. Why not use PostgreSQL if you can administer it and it does the job. Not that you need to program lots of your own stuff, but just to get your application running.
We use very little SQL Server specific stuff to run this site. It's mostly CRUD stuff, tailored towards SQL Server, but if any platform could handle CRUD with binary data, we'd be fine.
January 22, 2015 at 9:45 am
David.Poole (1/22/2015)
I've been surprised by the cost of some NOSQL solutions. By the time you do the sizing and capacity piece plus DR the costs can be considerably more than anticipated.The various software editions for any vendor is just a basic way of selling a product for what people are prepared to pay. They can rationalise back based on the additional features that are must haves.
Partitioning and compression are particularly useful features.
This is true if you buy the OSS stuff. If you just put up random PostgreSQL stuff, and weren't going to stress over HA, you could get by much cheaper. It just depends on what you need.
Most of us, I suspect, can't use partitioning/compression anyway because we're standard folk.
January 22, 2015 at 9:50 am
chrisn-585491 (1/20/2015)
From my view point FREE and OPEN SOURCE translates into more hours spent in development. Most of the time it is to create the same functionality that already exists.
That depends on the situation. (How much OSS have you done?) Many people are using SQL Server as simple RDBMS. This isn't rocket surgery and there are alternatives. Especially when you start talking hundreds of thousands of real money to be spent on licenses. Then you start weighing total costs across a lifetime.
Agree. That's the point. If you weight across a year, it's not worth it. If you weight across a decade, things change.
PostgreSQL was built to be an Oracle competitor, unlike MySQL. However, SQL is different in each, but it depends on how you've written code. If you have mostly generic SELECT/INSERT/UPDATE/ DELETE syntax, no SELECT INTO, no cursors, no full text, then it's a pretty simple port. It's still hours of development, but you have to cost those hours v licenses.
Not an easy decision, by any stretch, but worth considering, especially in places.
January 23, 2015 at 8:02 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (1/22/2015)
chrisn-585491 (1/20/2015)
From my view point FREE and OPEN SOURCE translates into more hours spent in development. Most of the time it is to create the same functionality that already exists.
That depends on the situation. (How much OSS have you done?) Many people are using SQL Server as simple RDBMS. This isn't rocket surgery and there are alternatives. Especially when you start talking hundreds of thousands of real money to be spent on licenses. Then you start weighing total costs across a lifetime.
Agree. That's the point. If you weight across a year, it's not worth it. If you weight across a decade, things change.
PostgreSQL was built to be an Oracle competitor, unlike MySQL. However, SQL is different in each, but it depends on how you've written code. If you have mostly generic SELECT/INSERT/UPDATE/ DELETE syntax, no SELECT INTO, no cursors, no full text, then it's a pretty simple port. It's still hours of development, but you have to cost those hours v licenses.
Not an easy decision, by any stretch, but worth considering, especially in places.
That's a pretty bold and general statement about open source that as someone said, depends on the situation. I mean, I use open source all the time. I use open source (python) to work with SQL Server because it's like magic, especially when your using your data for analytics and CAN'T afford additional money sinks into SAS. If I did the same thing in Microsoft technologies, it would likely take me more time versus Python for the simple fact that Python is a rapid prototyping language that is designed for speed in development.
On topic, we use R2 Standard and about to upgrade our single instance to 2012 Enterprise. It's a huge cost for us being a small studio too, but we see the value in the upgrade and plan to use SQL Server along side of Hadoop for advanced analytics.
However, as a new guy to SQL Server, I have beat it into my head that I cannot be tied specifically to any one technology regardless if that's SQL Server or not. I have to be dynamic and willing to change with the times rather being a slave to one piece of technology that may or may not topple me and the business. That's why I strongly believe in just using the right tool in the toolbox regardless if that tool is SQL Server, MySQL, Hadoop, MongoDB, CouchDB or whatever.
That's why I think so many people kind of view things like, "How can I get there with SQL Server?" versus "What can I use to get there with the technologies available?"
January 23, 2015 at 8:45 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (1/22/2015)
Andrew..Peterson (1/21/2015)
Steve, perhaps as the point person for SSC, you can start a petition (or similar) to MS to wake up. I'd like to think that with a user base over 1 million users might have some impact.
They don't listen to me, nor to the crowd here. We barely got SPs back, and even now they release them with gritted teeth. They'd rather work on some half baked feature, charge more, and abandon it in 2 versions when it doesn't sell.
Sadly - that is NOT a very good sign. Other than PASS, where do they get their insight?
Now, if a company has a product that is not listening to their customers, raising prices, and generally just not caring, what does that tell you?
We'll it was a great run, and yes, I do agree that it will be around for awhile, but will anyone be using it for new projects? new startups?
When I was at your seminar in Cambridge, all the attendees were our age. Does anyone remember COBOL?
The more you are prepared, the less you need it.
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