My default RDBMS of choice has always been PostgreSQL and I'm not sure why I should choose SQL Server, even now that it's available on a non-Windows platform. I understand that there are some fancy DB things that it can do and it's optimizer can be better in some circumstances, however I like to use ORMs and don't generally interact directly with the DB. Besides, those things pale in comparison (in my mind) to the hassle in dealing with Microsoft and licensing. Using PostgreSQL is simple and doesn't involve breaking out a spreadsheet to determine how much we need to pay for it. I've seen Microsoft licensing and the companies I've been at have had to have entire departments to figure it out. No thanks.
Now, the one thing I've heard from everyone is that the SQL Server tooling is beyond belief, and I believe it. If there is one weakness in the open source RDBMS world it's tooling. With such as large and obvious gap how is it that no one has filled it yet? Will no one pay for tooling? Are there tools available but the quality is not there? Seems like a good candidate for someone to fill a niche and possible make a successful business.
Well, with paid db management tools like Navicat, and open source BI tools like say, Pentaho (both just examples) you can get roughly on parity with SQL Server's tooling for something like Postgres.
Microsoft has just been polishing the integrated set of tools with SQL Server for a long time, especially with GUI tools that make the job of administering SQL Server more accessible for a different class of user (e.g. the ones who don't compile their own kernels and spend all day in a shell).
Oh, SSAS/SSIS/SSRS definitely aren't included on Linux currently. I wasn't suggesting they were.
But getting the features of these tools (cubes/OLAP = SSAS, reports = SSRS, ETL = SSIS) for other databases such as Postgres is possible with open source BI tools.
Open source BI platforms like Pentaho, BIRT, Jaspersoft (now owned by TIBCO) roll together families of different open source tools to give the same type of functionality for any DB platform. For example, things like Jaspersoft use the Mondrian OLAP cube engine underneath.
And also, with all the newer engines for data processing (Apache Spark, Hadoop, Ignite, etc.) you also have a lot of new backend options for analytical/report/BI processing also.
> I understand that there are some fancy DB things that it can do and it's optimizer can be better in some circumstances
That's a pretty big deal. (Also not sure what the ORM has to do with it... Unless it's just the fact that ORMs dumb down the queries that are possible)
Is it though? Is the Postgres optimizer that much worse? As for the ORM, I was trying to point out that something like ActiveRecord doesn't rely on the inherent capabilities of the RDBMS as much as raw SQL might. So things like stored procedures, triggers, advanced CTEs, etc. don't really add any value.
What tends to happen is death by a thousand cuts. Postgres can probably be tuned to efficiently run most queries that SQL Server could run, but DBA time is spent on it when on SQL Server the issue might just simply not exist. It also really helps power users who know enough SQL to write a report, but maybe not enough to tune queries.
> I understand that there are some fancy DB things that it can do
I haven't seen this anywhere else in this thread, so here's The Register saying that the Linux version would be lacking some features compared to the Windows version, though it doesn't mention what those might be.
It doesn't surprise me; I can imagine there's quite a bit of stuff in the server software, as a whole, that is dependent on native OS integration. I'll be interesting to see a matchup once it starts getting reviewed.
Now, the one thing I've heard from everyone is that the SQL Server tooling is beyond belief, and I believe it. If there is one weakness in the open source RDBMS world it's tooling. With such as large and obvious gap how is it that no one has filled it yet? Will no one pay for tooling? Are there tools available but the quality is not there? Seems like a good candidate for someone to fill a niche and possible make a successful business.