About SQL Server and Comparison with Other Relational Database Management Systems

SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS) that Microsoft has provided to us.

You can find a lot of articles about SQL Server on this site.

In this article we will briefly look at the history of SQL Server. Then I will make a comparison with other relational databases from my own perspective. You can comment your ideas to this article. I think SQL Server database administrators will wonder the history of the product they manage.

In 1988, Microsoft joined Ashton-Tate and Sybase and a year later, the first release of SQL Server was released for IBM OS/2.

Although SQL Server initially supports NT systems with version 4.21, the first SQL Server version designed for NT systems is 6.0

Microsoft released Windows NT in 1993 and SQL Server quit Sybase.

Major changes have been made to the Sybase engine in SQL Server 7.0.

In SQL Server 2000, there have been major changes in the engine. In SQL Server 2005, the code remaining from Sybase of the SQL Server engine has been completely rewritten.

The following table contains the history of the versions of SQL Server.

SQL Server History

The first SQL Server version I use is SQL Server 2000. Microsoft first started to compete with other relational databases with the SQL Server 2005 release. But as far as I can see from the IT industry, it was not counted as a strong relational database before SQL Server 2005.

Although SQL Server has begun to correct its bad image with 2005, we cannot say that it has completely corrected its bad image in these years. In my opinion, along with SQL Server 2008, it really started to compete seriously with other relational database systems.

Microsoft introduces us to Always On in SQL Server 2012. And with this release, I think it is a good alternative for small and medium sized systems and big systems. I think SQL Server found itself completely in 2012 and continues to improve itself with every release.

SQL Server and Other Relational Database Management Systems

In the next part of the article I will talk about relational database concept and relational database management systems.

The data in the relational database is kept in the table structure. These tables are related to each other with some keys. With the help of these keys, we can divide large data into pieces by associating different tables with each other. You can find the details of this topic in the article “Normalization Concept“.

Relational database systems are generally used in enterprise applications, web applications, desktop applications. We can list the most popular relational database systems (RDBMS) as follows.

1. Oracle
2. SQL Server
3. PostgreSQL
4. DB2
5. MySQL

What I’m going to say after this part of the article is my own ideas.

Many organizations I worked with were mostly using Oracle and SQL Server.

I shared my thoughts about the database management systems I mentioned below.

1) Oracle: Probably the best of database management systems. My favorite features are ASM Technology, RAC structure, FlashBack Technology, Online Resize operations. You can find articles on these topics in the ORACLE section of our website. You can also use the Search section to perform a specific search.

2) SQL Server: I think SQL Server is a very powerful database management system that can manage most of the databases on the market. In addition, SQL Server’s licensing cost is quite cheap compared to Oracle.

ASM technology, RAC structure, or FlashBack technology is not available in SQL Server. However, if the database and infrastructure are properly designed, high performance can be achieved in systems that are heavily processed, such as banking systems. Many banking systems currently use SQL Server as the database system.

3) PostgreSQL: Most PostgreSQL experts are fanatics. They often compare PostgreSQL with ORACLE and think PostgreSQL is much better than Oracle. Even if you talk to these people for a while, you may think that way.

I did not use PostgreSQL on large systems, but I searched the systems that use it and I talked to the administrators of this system many times and got information. In my opinion, PostgreSQL is a very powerful database management system that can manage most of the databases on the market like SQL Servre

The biggest advantage to be free. The biggest disadvantage is that there is no support mechanism since it is not a company. And it’s hard to find dba because there aren’t enough database experts. You can find the related articles in our PostgreSQL section.

4) DB2: I have never worked with this database management system, but I have witnessed a multi-performance result in a POC study in a bank. In addition, many company around the world are working with DB2.

5) MySQL: It is one of the most widely used database management systems. But I’ve often seen it used intensively in small systems.

The following site may give you an idea of the rates of use of relational databases.

https://db-engines.com/en/ranking

You can find many articles about all of these databases in https://dbtut.com

And you can find other blogs in the blog.feedspot.com.

https://blog.feedspot.com/database_blogs/

https://blog.feedspot.com/sql_blogs/

https://blog.feedspot.com/oracle_blogs/

https://blog.feedspot.com/postgresql_blogs/

https://blog.feedspot.com/mysql_blogs/