The only issue is that for simple designs a smaller, free product (e.g. postgreSQL) may have all that you need.
A lot of the new stuff in SQL server seems to be Business Intelligence tools, which I don't pay much attention too. the SQL stuff where you "select * from ...." seems to be much the same for several versions now, and gets only minor updates since it's already done right.
One can argue that when working with SQL Server Studio you don't have to worry about how to do things since the IDE will create most of what you need. However, the same can be said of decent IDEs for PostgreSQL, such as EMS.
Personally, I like the ability to read my functions, views, and triggers, and be able to easily understand what's happening; which is not something I usually experience when working with MSSQL.
Of course it depends on your requirements; for most purposes MSSQL is perhaps a better choice but if I needed an enterprisey-schwenterprisey zero downtime database server no matter what it costs, then of course I would go for Oracle or DB2.
The only RDBMS I worked with that was too limited for the enterprise ... is MySql. But that's because when you have a "Big Ball of Mud" it is easier to patch many things in the data-store and MySql has bad support for stored procedures / triggers / views and I also wouldn't trust it to store a data warehouse. But Postgresql was more than suitable for such a scenario.
MSSQL is also more than adequate for any task you might have.
I've seen this argument many times before ... that Oracle is more reliable. But with Oracle unless you have a DBA with years of experience to administer it, you're pretty much screwed. And a RDBMS that requires so much tweaking and maintenance just to keep it working doesn't seem so reliable to me.
True story ... while working at Adobe I participated in meetings about the future of Oracle at the company. Long story short: the company holds much of its data on 2 big Oracle servers and the problem with the setup is that it doesn't scale horizontally. And many newer projects are using Mysql, because it has a good-enough replication system and it also has a hidden gem (mysql proxy).
It seems to me (at least as an outside observer ... I'm not a professional DBA) that these are just effects of marketing campaigns.
Got some points you'd like to make that amount to something?
It took a long time to displace COBOL. Microsoft's technology is not superior. Their main advantage is the shady deals they have with computer manufacturers that push their software to people who don't know they do have options.
Oh... and BTW, where are the sales figures for all the people who download, say, Debian or CentOS or *BSD or OpenSolaris and just go about doing their business without showing in any sales chart?
That said, I find both Debian and OpenSolaris have strengths Microsoft doesn't. Do they have software management comparable to APT? Do they have file storage comparable to ZFS? Instead, people learn to live around their limitations and fail to notice there are better choices to whatever came bundled with their computers.
Well, to be fair, Windows is still the best OS choice for consumers.
I don't use it myself, as I've got Debian/Ubuntu on my workstations, and Debian on the servers. I used to have a Mac, which is user-friendly and decent for all kinds of users.
But Windows is friendly to consumers, it has the best application support, and it does install on commodity hardware. I tortured my wife at some point with Ubuntu on her home computer, but it really didn't work out. I mean, even I have a laptop with a dysfunctional wireless, and just yesterday Debian-testing broke my Gnome setup.
If you want to help out Linux/BSD to gain more market-share, it doesn't help pretending it's a good choice and that Windows is used because of "inertia". The way I see it, Linux/BSD missed their opportunity a long time ago.
At the very least they amount to people doing due dilligence and making the best choice they can.
Now you can argue all those people don't really know what they're doing, and you sit in a position of actually knowing they're making a mistake, but that's all so much posturing now, isn't it?
The point is, I'm providing stats, facts, information. It's great to be able to argue their relevance, because it's great to have something more than an unfounded opinion to base a discussion on.
Which is my point.
That seemed to be your point.
> At the very least they amount to people doing due dilligence and making the best choice they can.
No, it doesn't mean that, especially not if they follow your reasoning which I don't doubt a lot of them do.
It also seems like you're still pushing the same point, that sales numbers mean a better product.
> Now you can argue all those people don't really know what they're doing, and you sit in a position of actually knowing they're making a mistake, but that's all so much posturing now, isn't it?
So... because these people are in a position to buy software, they must be making the correct choices? To question the meaning of the SQL server sales figures is posturing? That's some blind faith in "people who buy things".
Odds are most people who have purchased MSSQL did so because they are hooking it up to Exchange or IIS in a company that is all Microsoft from top to bottom. Is this such a horrible thing? No. Like they say, nobody was ever fired for buying Microsoft. Does any of this mean that Exchange or IIS or MSSQL are better than the alternatives? No, it just means they are the safe and easy choices for people who make software purchases.
> The point is, I'm providing stats, facts, information. It's great to be able to argue their relevance, because it's great to have something more than an unfounded opinion to base a discussion on.
You're providing irrelevant stats, facts, information, and offering up an unfounded opinion that "higher sales mean a better product".
> Which is my point.
It may have been your intent, but it was not your point, at least not the point you seem to keep trying to make.
Here would be a more interesting statistic: can you show a case where a business or university IT department spent several weeks evaluating a number of competing products in detail, and concluded (complete with spreadsheets) that Microsoft's solution was undoubtedly the cheapest and most robust long-term investment?
It's sort of why the iCrap consistently dominates the mp3 market, despite the overwhelming lack of features: it is better suited to the simplistic needs of its users.
If you'd like for popularity to be the point of comparison, then Microsoft loses on pretty much every front in the war for the web server. PHP is more popular than any MS language for web development, MySQL is more popular than SQL Server for web development, Apache is (dramatically) more popular for web development, BIND is more popular, Postfix and Sendmail are more popular on the Internet at large than Exchange, and Linux is more popular on web servers than any MS OS. Apache runs 47% of the web, while IIS runs 23%. The remaining space is mostly taken up by other Open Source web servers, like nginx and Lighttpd.
I was willing to continue reading the article, up to the above line, at which point it became clear that there's no basis for anything said.