Microsoft SQL Server for Linux is a brilliant and logical idea

I imagine there was a sharp intake of breath as Microsoft announced SQL Server for Linux, quickly followed by a checking of dates. Yet it makes perfect sense; it's a very sensible strategic move for Microsoft. My question, and I know I’m not the only person asking this, is: what is the future of Windows in the data centre? …

[MacroRodent]

Why

...would a Linux site start running Microsoft SQL server instead of MariaDB, MySQL or Postgresql?

Does it have technical advantages, assuming it even runs as well on Linux as on Windows? A big "if", since Microsoft has probably very carefully tuned their SQL engine for the Windows platform, and Linux does many things quite differently (so an optimization for Windows may backfire spectacularly on Linux).

[Tom 7]

Re: Why

There may be some mileage in it for people who can only RTFM once. I used to do things in MSSQL that I occasionally wish I could do on MySql or Postgresql and it sometimes takes a while to find out how to do it the non-MS way. Having said that most of the really cool things I did were as VB extensions(?) and the chance of them getting that to work on a RaspberryPi is pretty much zero.

[Weapon]

Re: Why

I can't think of almost anything that you can do on MS SQL that you can't in Postgres. It can pretty much do everything and more. You can also do extensions in other languages on Postgres (but have a wider variety of language options)

[CheesyTheClown]

Re: Why

I wondered the same. I don't think it's that simple. SQL servers are made up of three distinct components (of which I may be clueless to proper names for) which are the front end, the query engine and the storage backend. This is common for most systems so far as I know. To achieve redundancy and scalability, it makes sense to have three or more of each type of node. This allows one node to be in maintenance while two remaining nodes are providing high availability. That's 9 nodes for a base configuration. It also means that platform related performance issues are probably less relevant than the core pipeline structure of the SQL server itself. So I would speculate that performance should in theory be equally optimized for each platform because of the base nature of how the SQL server would have to have been built to distribute work loads in such a farm.

There are likely many reasons to choose different SQL servers. This is similar to how I commonly use SQLite for local RAM oriented tasks vs. SQL Server for enterprise tasks.

Microsoft has a great strength on their SQL server platform because it's impressively well documented and a great deal of thought has gone into manageability as well as security and scalability. It's actually possible in an MSSQL environment to clearly calculate Big-O for different queries and stored functions. Other engines are commonly a black box. SQL Server is also a bit of a beast that hoes far beyond simple query processing and ISAM. It's more compatible to Oracle than MariaDB. It has excellent blob storage and is actually well suited for object storage.

Does this mean that SQL is a clear winner over the open source alternatives? Probably not in many normal cases, but it is a system that could simply add up to a more agile platform overall if employed properly. Microsoft also offers superb and structured training for nearly all facets of SQL Server which makes it very attractive to corporations. You can probably achieve the same things on other platforms, but operators, users and developers alike can learn nearly every component of SQL server without just hacking around and googling it to death. That's worth A LOT.

As for a Linux version, I believe Microsoft must intend to deploy additional management and services on Linux and while SQL server is probably best hosted on Windows, many products will benefit by having an MSSQL express environment native to Linux and Microsoft probably justifiably believes a partial port doesn't make sense if they can productize and maintain on Linux as well. So, I'm pretty sure the goal of this exercise isn't to build a mass market product, but instead to provide the storage solution for some other cross-platform products.

[Weapon]

Re: Why

You mean the GUI client, The query planner and the database engine? Though the query planner is generally part of the engine so maybe you are thinking of load balancer proxies?

Generally SQLite is decent for mobile or for making a small database to run on in testing then scale up. Otherwise for in-memory Redis is far easier to work with and is more intended for working in memory and scaling in memory.

If your goal is to move from Oracle, Postgres is a much better option than MariaDB. It is virtually compatible to Oracle (with maybe a few minor changes, but overall, you can port all stored procedures and everything with little issue). It is also a more powerful database than MariaDB and MS SQL.

What Microsoft is doing is simple, the cloud is dominated by Linux. They think that if they offer MS SQL for linux, that their clients will stick to using it on linux rather than migrate to Oracle, Postgres or MariaDB.

That said I don't see anyone switching from Postgres to MS SQL. So taking new market share is unlikely. Maybe from Oracle to some extent.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why

Because SQL Server, like Oracle or DB2, is more powerful than all those three? All comes down on how you use your RDBMS. A simple data dump? Or in a more sophisticated way? Why people run Oracle under Linux and other *nixes?

But Oracle is terribly expensive - I don't know about DB2 prices - SQL Server could try to cut some grass under Oracle feet.

Oracle too has to tune its RDBMS in different ways on Windows and on *nix systems - the low level APIs and processes/threads/memory management model are different enough to require proper tuning. MS has the resources to tune the SQL core on Linux as well.

[John Doe 6]

Re: Why

If you want to run Oracle Enterprise in an affordable way you need to run it either on Oracle/SUN or IBM Power hardware.

[TheVogon]

Re: Why

"If you want to run Oracle Enterprise in an affordable way you need to run it either on Oracle/SUN or IBM Power hardware."

Presumably you missed off the "un" before affordable...

[Weapon]

Re: Why

Sorry, Postgres is WAY more powerful than SQL Server.

[Jonathan Knight]

Re: Why

Because Linux is a more stable and more feature rich environment for sys admins to work in. Many small scale apps (and some big ones too) run on MS SQL server so being able to put that in docker on a linux guest is very tempting compared to running up another windows server box.

As MS have just offered MS SQL 2016 for free if you migrate from Oracle then there's a significant short term cost benefit as well.

If MS can win over some linux sys admins to viewing MS SQL server as a well behaved and low impact solution then that may lead to a long term market share gain.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why

"Because Linux is a more stable and more feature rich environment for sys admins to work in. "

It's not any more stable in my experience - often far less so - and in terms of features - Linux doesn't have a full version of Powershell - which is far more powerful than any standard *NIX shell so I can't see too many cross skilled sysadmins preferring *Nix to Windows.

[JLV]

Re: Why

I've seen several times, first hand, MySQL 5.x do really weird and non-obvious sql processing. Errors, in other words.I accept that MySQL is fine in 99% of the ORM-mediated web CRUD stuff, but I wouldn't trust it on mission-critical stuff that doesn't fall in that category and/or uses complex queries.

I definitely trust Postgres a whole lot more than MySQL. Does it fit all cases? Probably not. Not least you need to consider the question of company culture and available dba skills. I.e. you don't become a top dba on the fly on a new rdbms and Postgres is just not as widely used as MSSQL/Oracle.

On the other hand, I've worked for years on MSSQL (as well as Oracle) and I find it a fine database. It might be less amenable to huge volumes than Oracle, but even that might have been caused by incompetence in DBA/hardware configuration.

My opinion as a long time db pro. And a preference for open source/Linux over Windows. You don't have to agree with it.

So, once it is stable, I think MSSQL will be a fine alternative rdbms to those who prefer to have a commercial vendor and who prefers MSSQL over Oracle.

Choice is good. Nothing wrong with mysql if it rocks your world. Doesn't rock mine.

p.s. Note also that "having a vendor" is not the same as "getting your rdbms bug fixed". i.e.The chance that 1) you encounter a problem in the rdbms engine itself, not caused by your code, and that the 2) vendor fixes it promptly is pretty low.

1) is unlikely to happen on a battle-tested, 20 yr old rdbms. 2) rdbms and their optimizers are incredibly complex and need to allow for all the existing userbase, i.e. It is unlikely a vendor will ship you a non-security fix on short notice. They'll call it a feature and give you a run around. Been there, done that, with an Oracle bug.

[thames]

Re: Why

@MacroRodent - I listened to a podcast interview with one of the major Postgres developers a while ago. In response to a question about their users, he said the largest number of users switching to Postgres were switching from MS SQLServer (the interviewer was surprised as he had expected this to be Oracle).

The developer made his living consulting on large database optimisation projects involving Postgres, so his experience tended to be biased towards the large and complex end of the scale. However, it does give some basis for understanding that customers can and do switch databases.

As for technical advantages and performance, MS seems to be strongest at the low to mid end of the market, where quite frankly just about any database is good enough. Performance matters more at the high end of the market, but those also tend to be the customers who are most locked-in and will only switch if absolutely forced to. So looking at the overall market, I don't see a lot of opportunity for MS taking business from Oracle or IBM in corporate data centres.

I suspect it probably has more to do with MS Azure cloud. Various news stories have been saying that 25% of MS Azure instances are running Linux rather than MS Windows, and the Linux share is growing rapidly. Right now, none of those Linux instances are running MS SQL Server. If Microsoft ports their database to Linux, they at least have a chance of getting some of that market on their own cloud. If they don't, then they will be looking at a shrinking market share for it.

The head of MS has been talking a lot about how "cloud" is important to the company's future. Look at the broader context where they have been announcing ports of cut down cloud-oriented versions of Dot-Net and other products as well. Porting MS SQL Server to Linux makes some sense when looked at in terms of their cloud strategy.

Microsoft has flopped in the mobile and tablet market. The desktop PC market is expected to be stagnant or decline. They've therefore pinned their future hopes on "cloud". However, to be successful in "cloud" in anything other than a legacy support role means running on Linux. MS Windows Server is in the early days of being a legacy product line. If Microsoft wants to stay in business, they need to port their remaining viable product lines to other platforms. Thus we've seen a big splurge of MS mobile apps on Android and iPhone, and now server products on Linux server.

I've been around long enough to see operating systems come and go. That's the nature of the IT industry. It's only a matter of time before MS Windows will fade away. If Microsoft doesn't want to fade away with it, then they need to start building a future for themselves without it.

[Anonymous Coward]

"were switching from MS SQLServer"

I'm not that surprised. People using Oracle most of the time use it for tasks far beyond Postgres capabilities. Even if Postgres attempts some compatibility with Oracle, it still lacks too many features Oracle has (although you pay an eye and a leg for them) - try to move a partitioned database to Postgres.... and there are also the tools around Oracle, from SQL*Loader for ETL to RMAN for complex backup/restore tasks. Compare it to the poor Postgres backup/recovery features.

There are also many third party utilities and tools that integrates with Oracle for monitoring, managment, optimization, etc. etc.

Moreover, being PL/SQL historically a far richer language than T-SQL, many Oracle databases have a lot of procedural code and logic stored in the database itself, while many SQL Server users have that in the application code. Rewriting and re-testing all that code in Postgres can be a bloodbath. If the database is basically a data dump, porting is a little easier.

With MySQL in Oracle hands (and anyway, it wasn't ever free for non-GPL applications...), Postgres is actually the only true FOSS database solution, as long as you can stay withing its limitations. If you need to move from Windows to Linux to save on software licenses, you had not many choices.

[John Doe 6]

Re: Why

Because IF the other end is something that requires MS SQL server or Oracle you just can't run it on MariaDB, MySQL or Postgresql... support from SAP, SunGard or some other.

[Anonymous Curd]

Re: Why

Why not Maria or My? They're a couple of steps off toy databases, as far as serious database work is concerned. I'd happily run an ORM-mediated web service off one, but anything beyond that and you're going to run into Fun Behaviour. Like being able to execute ambiguous SQL (e.g. mismatch between aggregates and group by) with unpredictable results, or the lack of functionality that is critical for any analytical application, like window functions.

Why not postgres? That's a much tougher question, because postgres is absolutely outstanding in almost every respect. Rock solid, performant dependable, predictable, exceptionally well documented. It shares a common core with a range of high quality commercial engines. Unfortunately, until very recently, doing Enterprisey stuff like high availability and clustering was Unnecessarily Hard. A good example of this is replication, which pre-9.4 usually required some hideous homebrewed witchcraft involving triggers. This is something the commercial products do out of the box. This feature disparity is lessening over time, but there's still a few areas where it's lacking for serious use, like a good/standardised columnar layout, or easy high availability.

The big killer for most shops is that commercial support is slim to non-existent. If your database is running transactions or business critical analytics, it's a really hard sell to get an organisation to run without having the Big Red Panic Button to push.

I would genuinely love for this not to be the case. Outside of RDBMS (where I, happily, normally work) the data landscape is absolutely dominated by open source tech, and that is fantastic. Unfortunately, the hard reality is in the vast majority of use cases open source RDBMS platforms are not able to meet the expectations of most businesses.

That said, I don't think this is as big a deal as the author. It certainly is in terms of a retreat for Windows in the datacentre, but running MS SQL usually means also running SSIS and SPSS and the rest of the MS data apps suite, which of course are all Windows clients, and of course come part and parcel of your SQL Server license. It's a carrot to maintain windows on the business workstation.

[banalyzer]

Re: Why

You don't have to use the standard postgre.

You could use postgreXC and if you want commercial backing with management tools, support, replication, large doses of Oracle compatibility and training etc then you then you could always try Enterprise DB which builds on top of postgre XC.

It will still cost but you should manage to keep your eye and your leg attached.

[Anonymous Curd]

Re: Why

You are, of course, absolutely right. I'm personally a big fan of Enterprise DB (apart from the silly name). I think I'm biased in this because I work in a large consultancy, but it's often a hard sell. If you're even looking at EDB you've probably made two decisions

1. You want an RDBMS, but not Oracle

2. You want Enterprisey features and commercial support

Unless you've *also* made the decision that you really like Open Source software (which is still rare; accounting departments consider making purchasing decisions on ideology a sacking offence), EDB is principally competing with MS SQL (see another comment on this page about Postgres drawing mainly from MS SQL users, though sometimes the likes of Greenplum come into the mix too). The way things usually go at that point include some variations on a common theme:

1. Massive discounts on MS SQL because you're inevitably already an Exchange/AD/Office/Windows customer

2. Free professional services to grease the skids

3. A gentle nudge in the direction of the differences in scale between global Goliath MS, and relatively minor player EDB.

4. Oh, did we mention you get the reporting, ETL, management and development suites as part of the license too?

5. If all else fails point out it is ridiculously cheap when you do it right on Azure (hint: use the blob storage)

I've seen this happen loads of times now as people shift loads off their rapidly obsoleting multimillion pound/dollar/euro Teradata/Oracle installations. IBM try a similar play, but it usually falls flat because of the distinct air of Naff around their current products.

And now they can throw platform-agnosticity (is that even a word?) into the marketing mix. I strongly, strongly suspect if it wasn't for the enormous sunk costs in Apex/OBIEE etc., Oracle customers would be flocking to MS about now. We've already seen it from Teradata.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Why

"3. A gentle nudge in the direction of the differences in scale between global Goliath MS, and relatively minor player EDB."

The question to ask here would be "If I went for this would MS need me as much as I'd need MS?".

[Richard Plinston]

Re: Why

> Why not Maria or My? They're a couple of steps off toy databases,

Google runs on MySQL, it is hardly a toy.

No, wait, it converted to MariaDB after, and because of, Oracle bought My.

http://readwrite.com/2013/09/14/google-waves-goodbye-to-mysql-in-favor-of-mariadb

[Anonymous Curd]

Re: Why

That's somewhat like saying eating 6,000 calories a day isn't going to make you fat because, hey, look at Michael Phelps, he was pretty ripped, right?

Most businesses are not Google, like most people are not Michael Phelps. They are not the blueprint to follow, unless you happen to have a stable of thousands of world-leading engineers on hand to solve your problems. You've only got to look at the hundreds of fantastic contributions to MySQL and MariaDB from Google engineers (and their market-transforming white papers on bigtable, dremel etc.) to see the amount of effort they've put into countering the aforementioned Fun Behaviour.

As for vanilla postgres being more powerful than MS SQL? Good as 9.5 is (and it IS good) outside of a few, niche areas (hello, PostGIS), that really isn't the case. The feature list of current MS SQL is seriously impressive. AD integration, row-level security, multi-site/hybrid cloud replication, in-database parallelised R execution, in memory, columnar layouts, OLAP and OLTP. Doing all of that under one license under one management suite is seriously impressive. That's why this has caused a buzz. If you're looking over the fence from Oracle land, where each of those features is Yet Another License (if it's even possible), the grass probably looks very, very green.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why

If you wanted to run SAP or any other set of commercial applications, you cannot use the open source DBs you mention. Also, if you set aside the cost of licensing (which you can do with SQL if you have Oracle licenses to migrate), the on going support costs of discounted SQL are not that much more than Oracle's support charges for MySQL with comparable features.

[9Rune5]

Re: Why (collations! that is one reason!)

A few years ago we wanted to step up from Sybase SQL Anywhere to something beefier. We were riddled with stability problems, and at one point I was deep inside the debugger trying to locate bugs within SQL Anywhere's ADO.Net provider (and I found a couple of very nasty bugs, reported them, but gave up after I realized there were probably bugs left in the unmanaged code part of their provider and the ungrateful b----- would not hand over their source code)

So... We started looking around.

As a Norwegian company delivering solutions to Swedish and Finnish users, collations are quite important to us.

As far as I could tell at the time, MariaDB and MySQL were completely oblivious to what a proper collation should do. Å is not the same letter as A BTW. Ø is more like 'OE' rather than 'O'. In Scandinavia it is a strange thing when there is no separation between these.

I found a feature request somewhere that begged for the implementation of the ICU library (coincidentally the one used by SQL Anywhere, and its collation support works very well). But that was it. The stock collations made absolutely no frigging sense.

MSSQL is not perfect in this regard. There is a debate surrounding the new Swedish rules where 'v' no longer equals 'w'. MS decided to stick with the old rules that happens to be the same rules as used in Finland. (SQL Anywhere lets the developer choose sides – a bit daunting at first, but at least there is a choice) So far our Swedish customers have not complained, and the stability so far is a huge improvement over what we were used to.

There are also more pedestrian questions, such as finding a proper ADO.Net provider. I found one for PostgreSQL. It wasn't free.

IMO the choice is not obvious at all.

[Weapon]

Re: Why (collations! that is one reason!)

For postgres ADO.net, have you looked at Npgsql?

[Warm Braw]

[is] Microsoft’s heart is really in the Windows Server business?

The bigger question is whether Microsoft's heart is really in the Windows business.

Microsoft's revenue is rather dependent on masses of corporate desktops running Windows which then leverage CALs and other data centre sales. Part of that dependency involves locally-developed, business-specific desktop clients talking to locally-developed, business-specific server software.

Move away from Windows Server and the argument for the corporate Windows desktop gets much weaker - your client might as well just be a browser. Couple that with the apparent decision that Windows 10 in the consumer market is going to have to be monetised in ways other than direct sales and you have to wonder where Microsoft's revenue is actually going to come from in future.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: [is] Microsoft’s heart is really in the Windows Server business?

Microsoft's revenue is rather dependent on masses of corporate desktops running Windows which then leverage CALs and other data centre sales. Part of that dependency involves locally-developed, business-specific desktop clients talking to locally-developed, business-specific server software.

Move away from Windows Server and the argument for the corporate Windows desktop gets much weaker - your client might as well just be a browser.

Couple that with the apparent decision that Windows 10 in the consumer market is going to have to be monetised in ways other than direct sales and you have to wonder where Microsoft's revenue is actually going to come from in future.

I think it's not that hard to work out.

Microsoft has two choices: either

- continue the upgrade scam game where it has to invent new reasons to upgrade something that basically runs OK-ish (for various degrees of OK, but especially the large remaining base of Win XP and Win 7 is an indication that that market has more or less dried up other than for new sales) or ..

- switch to a monthly model, but that first requires that customers are locked in, which is why all of the current efforts appear "free" or "low cost", it's simply a return to the old playbook of bait before bill (used to be Bill, but he's pretending to be charitable now). As I said in another post, the monthly model offers vast benefits for Microsoft so they will do anything to get that in place sooner rather than later, which is where this "openness" and offering Linux services comes from.

Your average office gnome will get all excited and will issue diktats that it all must remain Microsoft (because -shudder- it means they don't have to learn anything new), and as soon as Microsoft has its claws firmly re-embedded in your enterprise (certainly the Linux part), the prices will start rising properly and we will get a rerun of all the wailing we had from the educational establishment when they walked into this one with wide open eyes despite repeated warnings from us veterans who had seen this all before..

I give this two year, max, because there is a stench of desperation emanating from all this.

[James 51]

Re: [is] Microsoft’s heart is really in the Windows Server business?

We had a lot of VB apps running on people's desktops. Over the last few years we've been rewriting them as webpages as they've needed updating. Hopefully it means we won't get stung by an unsupported platform again and also people can use Windows, Macs, Linux or even their phones to get stuff done.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: [is] Microsoft’s heart is really in the Windows Server business?

Do recall that CALs aren't going away even if the desktop and server go off the Windows reservation. I'm waiting to see how that shoe fits on RTM of Linux SQL Server. They are already playing the core count game for Windows Server (which is making me look elsewhere for a base server OS).

[TheVogon]

Re: [is] Microsoft’s heart is really in the Windows Server business?

"The bigger question is whether Microsoft's heart is really in the Windows business."

Market share is still not declining on the desktop from ~ 90% and it's still increasing on the server, application, hypervisor and cloud side, so I suspect they are still in it!

"Microsoft's revenue is rather dependent on masses of corporate desktops running Windows which then leverage CALs and other data centre sales"

Partly - but it's much more about cloud these days. Microsoft overtook Amazon for cloud revenue a few quarters back and are growing faster!

"Move away from Windows Server and the argument for the corporate Windows desktop gets much weaker"

It really doesn't - it's far more about the applications actually on the desktop in most corporates. People have already moved away from Windows Server in some places for common tasks - e.g. NetApp filers - and it's made zero difference on the desktop.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: [is] Microsoft’s heart is really in the Windows Server business?

Market share is still not declining on the desktop from ~ 90% and it's still increasing on the server, application, hypervisor and cloud side, so I suspect they are still in it!

Can you point at independently validated facts for this?

Partly - but it's much more about cloud these days. Microsoft overtook Amazon for cloud revenue a few quarters back and are growing faster!

As above? I know you're a Microsoft cheerleader, but it would be much more believable if you backed that up with facts.

[John Doe 6]

Re: [is] Microsoft’s heart is really in the Windows Server business?

"Microsoft's revenue is rather dependent on masses of corporate desktops running Windows..."

That has not been correct since Windows 2000... Microsoft is earning most money on enterprise solutions than from Windows.

Here is what Microsoft earned their money on (source ZDNet.com)

* Server products and Cloud services: 19.5%

* Gaming: 17%

* Office Commercial: 14%

* Windows OEM: 11%

* Dynamics: 9%

Oh btw, You pay CALs whether you access Your Microsoft server from Windows, Mac, Linux or whatever... so a MS SQL server on Linux will result in CALs paid to Microsoft instead of to Oracle.

[1Rafayal]

Or, is Microsoft just trying to make money?

[GeezaGaz]

Historically changing for software on Linux has never worked well.

I was a big Delphi user and I remember Borland asking did anyone want Delphi for Linux, cue rapturous applause and shouts of joy so they went and gave the world Kylix.

Except no-one actually bought it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Beside the fact Borland made some mistakes (technical and not) in porting Delphi to Linux, there is a big difference between the Linux developers, and the Linux datacenter administrators and managers. You will find a lot of expensive proprietary software from Oracle, IBM, SAP and others running on Linux (and maybe other *nixes) in datacentres - different people choosing what software is going to be selected, bought and run...

[thames]

@GeezaGaz - I bought it, at least I bought a book that had a CD of it stuck to the cover. Kylix was a crap port (if I recall correctly, I think they used Wine libs instead of a native port), and the GUI stuff didn't integrate well with Gnome or KDE. So if you wrote a desktop GUI program it looked like a Windows program running on Linux via Wine (which it basically was).

Meanwhile, it offered nothing interesting to anyone writing server programs. People writing Linux software were by and large interested in the future, and at the time the future was the web.

So, it simply sat on my shelf until I cleared it away along with a number of other old and obsolete items a couple of years ago.

Really though, it offered nothing of interest to Linux developers. One thing that Linux has never lacked was loads of software development tools.

[John Doe 6]

Uhmm... at that point all development tools on Linux were free and delivered as a part of the distros.

We actually don't have any free enterprise class RDB which is supported by SAP, Sungard, SimCorp or SAS.

[Weapon]

SAS supports Postgres in 9.4 and forks of Postgres (Greenplum) in earlier versions. (Netezza and Aster are also forks of Postgres but are proprietary)

[Doctor Syntax]

"Except no-one actually bought it!"

For good reasons. The preview was shipped with D7 so we got a chance to see what it was like. I remember trying to compile a perfectly correct bit of Delphi code. Kylix barfed on it throwing non-existent syntax errors. Cross-Kylix compiled it.

And it all ran on top of a hacked version of GPL Wine. I don't recall seeing anything about getting the source for that.

If that wasn't enough Linux switched to 2.6 at which point it threw a new crop of errors.

[9Rune5]

As I recall, Kylix' main target audience were webapp developers and those developing middle-tier stuff.

The GUI stuff, I thought that ran ontop of Qt? In any case, it was mostly there as an afterthought; the bare minimum you could get away with for making a very basic GUI.

I think part of the problem was that it took some time (after Kylix' release) before developers started belting out web services for real. That purpose could have been ideal for Kylix AFAIK, but meanwhile Windows made quite a few improvements as a server platform, so...

[John Doe 6]

No No No... Now, that wouldn't be Microsoft, would it ?

[TheVogon]

Microsoft appear to have decided that the future enterprise data centre is in the cloud.

TFTFY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds good until...

You see the system generated slup triggers, slurp SQL Agent job, slurp tempoary tables, slurp datatype, etc...

[JLV]

Re: Sounds good until...

>You see the system generated slup triggers, slurp SQL Agent job, slurp tempoary tables, slurp datatype, etc...

>As Linux lacks so many enterprise-scale features compared to Windows Server, it's no wonder only SQL Server lite can be hosted on the shareware OS

That's you, both times, same subject. This time with a cute penguin moniker.

OK, we know you are fairly ignorant, prone to generalizations and a fanboi. What I fail to understand is whether you are an MS shill (seems like it from #1). Or a Linux wannabe. Anyone know?

Right now, I am tending to the amanfrommars absurdity typology.

But unwittingly absurd & strident, a la Eadon.

[DrXym]

I doubt it will be fine tuned

There are probably so many Windows dependencies that whoever is porting it is #ifdef'ing huge chunks of functionality away and writing a giant thunk layer that allows the code to think its working on Windows when it isn't (i.e. something akin to winelib).

So I really can't see a port being fine tuned or worth much consideration.

I wonder why Microsoft are doing it at all really and the only reason that springs to mind is they want to offer Linux cloud solutions but they don't the complexity, headaches or embarrassment of using a rival backend for people who choose that offering.

[HmmmYes]

I think MS thinks that the there is a very large market for DBs operating in the cloud.

I think the cloud will be dominated by Docker - or something like Docker - i.e. cluster of disconnected apps. Each cluster needs a DB.

At the moment, MS is nowhere to be found.

MS has 0% of doing something Docker-like. You may not have noticed, but MS struggle to recruit and maintain SW bodies. Just like everyone else.

Port SQLserver to Linux is a relatively pragmatic idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't you just run Docker in the cloud? All the same cloud benefits apply.

Microsoft supports Docker. Docker has a page all about Docker in Azure and Docker in the upcoming Windows Server release on Docker's website.

https://www.docker.com/microsoft

[hmas]

Plenty of reasons why

ISV applications, embedded systems, appliances...

[Anonymous Coward]

Transact-SQL

Most people won't even realise, but Sybase(*) SQL Server (back in the '90s was the original SQL server which Microsoft branched to add Windows-specific features to) has been available on Linux for years and years.

Sybase SQL server is a good solid database server with pretty good performance. Unfortunately that was never enough to win in the RDMS game - you needed to either have extra bells and whistles to justify your license fees (Oracle), or be FOSS (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc) to appeal to the non-corporates.

If you write write Transact-SQL in MS SQL Server today, you can more than likely spin up Sybase SQL Server on Linux and run the same SQL. You'll only run aground if you use some of these annoying Microsoft 'extensions' to the original spec.

Sybase does do LDAP authentication, so you may be able to get it to talk to an AD server, although I've never need or wanted to try this.

(* Now owned by SAP, dissapointingly)

[Down not across]

Re: Transact-SQL

Sybase SQL server is a good solid database server with pretty good performance.

<pedant>

Sybase Adaptive Server. Sybase renamed their product to differentiate from MS's SQL Server.

</pedant>

And yes it traditionally performed better with half the hardware needed for Oracle. Sure it had some scaling issues due to its threading (and TEMP back when you could only have one temp).

Sadly it was indeed borged by SAP.

[Weapon]

Re: Transact-SQL

There is also tPostgres and pgTSQL for porting from MS SQL to Postgres using the same.

[Anonymous Coward]

This only helps if you run SQL Server alone

A lot of enterprise DB environments have a lot of middleware / plugins that run alongside the database. Its great if you can run SQL Server on Linux, but if the middleware requires Windows then you will still need Windows servers around.

[vordan]

You're forgetting one thing...

MS SQL server will be available in 2017 with *limited* set of features.

Until they make it work completely and truly critical-mission-ready, it will be 2019, maybe beyond that.

That, in internet and dog years is 15 years from now. Who knows what will happen until then?

[Richard Plinston]

Re: You're forgetting one thing...

> MS SQL server will be available in 2017

Which is how you spell 'vaporware' ...

> with *limited* set of features.

and 'bait and switch'.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You're forgetting one thing...

That was a little surprising, the long lag time to release... but, come on, this is a big job and if Microsoft has one glitch in this product you guys are going to be all over them so I'm sure they want to make sure it is rock solid or people will accuse them of some grand conspiracy to get Windows to replace Linux.

[W. Anderson]

Increase in Microsoft shill propaganda

The logic of porting SQLServer to Linux is questionable at the moment, but the brilliance is only in the imagination of the article writer.

Oracle databases are significantly easier and more straight forward to port to EnterpriseDB PostgreSQL than to SQLServer, and SQLServer, at best, is actually proven less robust, less reliable and substantially less secure than PostgreSQL.

Furthermore Oracle DB, IBM DB2, PostgreSQL, NoSQL databases, MySQL/MadiaDB and every other established database runs an order of magnitude faster and with more reliability and security on Linux than on Windows Server 2012.

Microsoft and it's legion of dupes are blowing smoke out of their anuses to think that any serious Linux shop would adopt SQLServer, except those paid to do so or complete idiots, since SQLServer is slated to perform no more than about 75% with less features on Linux than on Windows.

[JLV]

Re: Increase in Microsoft shill propaganda

>legion of dupes

>any serious Linux shop would adopt SQLServer

Correct. But I think you are missing the target demographic. It's existing SQL Server users that want to dip their toes into Linux or cloud-but-not-using-Azure. Or users who require (whether justifiably or not) a commercial rdbms. Not existing users of postgres/mysql.

And certainly not the open-source-only crowd.

I don't necessarily expect a stable/fully-performant SQL Server any time soon. But if MS sticks with it, it'll give that type of users an option to migrate certain stacks to Linux. And it also gives Oracle users something to nego$iate with.

I see that as a, small, boon to Linux use and adoption. But hey, if you see a Ballmer and MS fanboi behind every tree, I guess we can agree to disagree.

p.s. I think the poster who cautioned about all the availability of ancillary MSSQL-supporting software on Linux (i.e. not mssql itself) is much closer to the mark.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Increase in Microsoft shill propaganda

I don't think that is the target demographic at all. The target demographic, given the Oracle free licenses to move to SQL promotion which accompanied this announcement is clearly the mass of Oracle users who are unhappy with their costs or Oracle in general. I'm sure some Windows Server users will migrate to Linux for SQL, but small price to pay to get Oracle DB workloads. The idea that your average shop is going to up and migrate to MariaDB or the like is not reasonable. For one, among many, reasons, most of those shops are using mostly commercial applications, SAP, Oracle apps, Microsoft apps, IBM apps, etc. None of those are supported on Maria or Postgre.

[W. Anderson]

Re: Increase in Microsoft shill propaganda

Commercial support Services for PostgreSQL are provided by EnterpriseDB, a national professional services company with great expertise in PostgreSQL,as several employees are part of "core" PostgreSQL development team. There are also several mid-level and smaller commercial PostgreSQL support Services companies and organizations around the USA and are particularly widespread in European Union, South America and Asia.

Furthermore major companies like IBM and Redhat have investments in and fully support and work with EnterpriseDB corporation, so the Open Source aspect of PostgreSQL that many Microsofties find so pejorative, has no relevance with this commercial database backing.

[TheVogon]

Re: Increase in Microsoft shill propaganda

"Commercial support Services for PostgreSQL are provided by EnterpriseDB, a national professional services company with great expertise in PostgreSQL,as several employees are part of "core" PostgreSQL development team. There are also several mid-level and smaller commercial PostgreSQL support Services companies and organizations around the USA and are particularly widespread in European Union, South America and Asia."

So what you are saying is it's a zoo and you can't guarantee consistent global support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Increase in Microsoft shill propaganda

Whenever anyone uses the word "robust", they are either describing salad dressing or don't know what they are talking about.

[TheVogon]

Re: Increase in Microsoft shill propaganda

"SQLServer, at best, is actually proven less robust, less reliable and substantially less secure than PostgreSQL."

You got that the wrong way round. For instance SQL Server has had far fewer security vulnerabilities than Postgres, outperforms it in almost every benchmark, and has far more advanced clustering and resilience options...

"Furthermore Oracle DB, IBM DB2, PostgreSQL, NoSQL databases, MySQL/MadiaDB and every other established database runs an order of magnitude faster and with more reliability and security on Linux than on Windows Server 2012."

Again wrong. The top TPC-C and TPC-E benchmarks are all on Windows Server 2012 / SQL Server - which with SQL Server has had far fewer vulnerabilities than any commercially supported Linux / Database stack listed above.

[Lapun Mankimasta]

had to happen

All it needed was to see Monkey Boy off the premises. It doesn't surprise me in the least. And yes, I expect it is Azure-focused. Frankly, MS SQLServer's been one of the more secure of all of Microsoft's product lines. I half-expected that division to do a management buy-out if Monkey Boy had hung in there for longer. It can survive on its own: now it's in theory free from its "Siamese Twinnage" to MS Windows, it can grow even faster.

Speaking of alternative heavy-weight SQL server DBMSes, I'm surprised no one's mentioned Ingres, to wit:

https://www.openhub.net/p/ingres

http://esd.actian.com/product/Community_Projects/Ingres_Database

It used to be one of the "Enterprise" contenders. And it comes with a good number of the goodies people want.

[Phil_Evans]

Well actually...

"Well, if they announce AD Services running on Linux, you’ll know that their heart is no longer in the Windows data centre."

I guess you could say this is here now. Samba 4 Server does a pretty good 'PDCEm' or Domain controller repl today. So to keep your Data center 'Linux-pristine', you could (with some elbow grease) achieve this via MIIS or other Dirsync tool. Let's face it, most orgs don't really need a lot more than user/perms/pw sync when it comes to the cloud anyhow.

(expecting to be corrected by non-theorists)

[Calorus]

Don't touch it with a barge pole - it will be error prone from the word go and a monumental security hole for two reasons: 1) closed-source, 2) at some point, when it fails, Microsoft will stop supporting it, just as it stopped supporting Skype for Linux leaving you with a festering, suppurating hole in the middle of your stack.

You've been warned; beware.

[JustNiz]

For once I agree with Microsoft.

I think this is great news, but I'll bet that Microsoft will come to regret this decision.

Contrary to what Microsoft obviously believe, I don't believe that any new project would sensibly choose SQL Server over say Postgresql, but the existence of a Linux-based Sql Server would definitely facilitate the porting of existing Windows-based deployments over to Linux and bring the many advantages of that to the user, such as more control, better security and savings on Windows Server Licence fees.

[vintries]

Case Insensitivity

one of the best feature I saw in SQL Server is Case Insensitivity, as we know oracle is case sensitive

and both says its because of DB engine, also ultimately relies on Operating System engine.

We also know SQL server usage Sybase engine, we also know Syabse is not case Insensitive,

Since we know Windows OS is Case Insensitive and hence SQL Server is case Insensitive.

and Linux OS Engine is Case Sensitive.

Now : is Linux version SQL server is case sensitive ? then there is major giant leap Microsoft has made...

How Microsoft is supporting/accomodating case insensitivity on linux for SQL server ???