SQL Server on Linux public preview

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2016/11/16/announcing-sql-server-on-linux-public-preview-first-preview-of-next-release-of-sql-server/

by olalonde • 10 years ago

247 158 10 years ago

blogs.technet.microsoft.com

nateguchi• 10 years ago

We have seen strong reception for the private preview to date with more than 50% of Fortune 500 companies applying for the private preview

wow

wictory• 10 years ago

I guess it is easier to get rid of Windows than it is to get rid of SQL Server.

oblio2• 10 years ago

There are few things which can be more embedded in your app's architecture than the data store, especially if the initial (and reasonable) assumption is that you won't ever switch away from it.

paol2• 10 years ago

It probably is, but there's an even better reason: Windows may be worth getting rid of, SQL Server isn't (except perhaps on grounds of licensing cost)

I've worked with all major RDBMS systems at one point or another and SQLS is by far the nicest.

technofiend• 10 years ago

It's not about getting rid of Microsoft: it's about getting rid of Oracle. Their licensing costs even for a very large shop may start out cheap (think 90% discounts) but will creep up over time. And when you inevitably manage to get a combination of oracle-dependent data, queries, processes, etc entrenched the prices start to climb and the even more expensive options come out. Oh you need more performance? Go horizontal with RAC. You need to go faster but can't reengineer things? Exadata will fix you right up.

marktangotango• 10 years ago

Anecdata point: I've heard SQL Server Enterprise runs $20k a core. I've never heard pricing for Oracle.

Qantourisc• 10 years ago

We have made it easier than ever to get started with SQL Server. You’ll find native Linux installations with familiar RPM and APT packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu Linux, and packages for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server will be coming soon as well.

So easy for some ;) Not to not applaud their efforts though.

oblio2• 10 years ago

SQL Server is meant primarily for enterprises, what they're doing makes sense. IMO if they want to be super nice* they could provide a zip package which other distros can turn into their specific packages.

* Open Sourcing it is probably unrealistic at this point.

loeg2• 10 years ago

Use rpm2cpio and you have a cpio archive. Not zip exactly but you could work with it outside of Redhat/Ubuntu/Suse.

beagle3• 10 years ago

the "alien" program can convert packages between different install formats.

myf01d• 10 years ago

I wonder who would choose Microsoft or MySQL over PostgreSQL these days.

nitinreddy88• 10 years ago

Not to trigger a debate which is better, Many corporate companies choose SQL server over MySQL or PostgreSQL.

One reason is, Paid support and excellent integration with existing Microsoft products. The features are totally worthy to use SQL server.

vetinari• 10 years ago

Paid support is available for MySQL and PostgreSQL too. It is from different companies than those who offer the SQL Server/Oracle/whatever support though, which may a problem if the newcomers don't already have a foot in the door already. Think of it from the business POV: why would the sellers of existing support leave their business to some outsider?

mrweasel• 10 years ago

Maybe you don't have a choice. There's a ton of business applications that only support SQL Server. I worked for a company the used SAP Business One for their ERP system, it only supports SQL Server. Our infrastructure was mostly Linux, but for SAP B1, there's not a choice, you need SQL Server.

Old school client server database applications is still very much alive.

usloth_wandows• 10 years ago

If you're asking this question then you shouldn't be using SQL Server.

tonyedgecombe• 10 years ago

I suspect this will become a problem for Oracle/Microsoft over time, most startups seem content with the open source solutions. I doubt this will change as they mature, this leaves Oracle and Microsoft trying to screw more money out of a dwindling and aging set of customers.

chillydawg• 10 years ago

All companies eventually need a generic BI stack and Microsoft has one of the best around, all built on top of SQL Server & co.

manigandham2• 10 years ago

The classic silicon valley "startups" are a tiny fraction of the market, and if they can't afford or don't want to pay for licenses of good software, they wouldn't be good customers anyway.

onlydnaq• 10 years ago

That really depends on your use cases.

I love Postgres and have been using it for a long time. However if you need good support for, for example, self-updating efficient materialized views, then Postgres won't really do (yet).

h1d2• 10 years ago

Are you genuinely comparing by technical superiority?

If I would venture for a new product without definitive advantage, one needs better "googlability", which seems still in much favor to MySQL.

Besides that, you have tools that works fine with MySQL and people who are used to using it which also needs conversion.

I'd like to know how you would convince any average MySQL users the switch?

Amezarak2• 10 years ago

Well, it depends on what they need.

Do they write a lot of queries? The breadth and depth of SQL features MSSQL supports blows MySQL out of the water. I work mostly with MySQL now, and it's painful to go back. For example, I really like windowing functions and table-valued functions. But there's a lot, lot more.

Do they want much better query performance? MSSQL again.

Are they a business type? They will probably like stuff like SSRS, SSIS, and SSAS, and all the additional tooling around them.

There really is no comparison between MySQL and MSSQL. Postgres is great, and generally what I use if I have a choice because it's free and better in many respects than MySQL, but even there I have problems thinking of things that Postgres does better than MSSQL, though there are a few. There's just _so much_ MSSQL does and so much it does right, and the stuff it does wrong is generally getting fixed (no more XML PATH, they finally added STRING_AGG!!!).

But if they're happy with what they're got, well, it'd be silly to spend the money on an MSSQL license.

IME, MSSQL is pretty google-able - that's really how I learned it. Do you have any specific problems with its googlability?

baq• 10 years ago

Have you used SQL server? Tooling is light years ahead of pretty much anything.

nurettin• 10 years ago

You mean the CTRL-L query profiler, the table editor and the server performance monitor that the MSSQLMS had since 2005? Or is there something else?

olavgg2• 10 years ago

Do they have a proper CLI client now? Working with SQL Server is great as long you have SQL Server Management Studio, but not having a CLI client makes me cry when I just want to do something quickly over SSH.

easuter2• 10 years ago

No to mention the SQLS execution planner will beat the pants off both MySQL's and Postgres' when it comes to non-trivial queries.

Don't know how it compares to Oracle as I've never used it.

arethuza• 10 years ago

I would suspect that most instances of SQL Server support off-the-shelf applications that require SQL Server rather than custom built applications.

Of course, a lot of these come from Microsoft - but there are a lot of 3rd party applications that support SQL Server. There are also a lot of advantages of standardizing on a single database platform within an organization.

JunkDNA• 10 years ago

I worked in a reasonably sized organization that was heavily invested in MS products. If I had used SQL Server I would have had access to DBA's and secondary apps we were already licensing for ETL, reporting, etc... I chose postgres because at the time, the Linux drivers for SQL Server were junk. The message from our ops folks was basically, "Knock yourself out but you're totally on your own."

ronack• 10 years ago

If you have the money MSSQL is a better all-purpose RDBMS. The tooling is in a completely different league and there are fewer surprises with regards to performance (like PG's slow counts, paging, etc.). I very much hope PG will close the gap though.

callesgg• 10 years ago

There is no such thing as have the money, every expense chips away from the profits.

Edit. I understand that it weighs against development time but that is a different matter than money in the bag.

combatentropy• 10 years ago

The tooling is in a completely different league

I keep hearing about Microsoft SQL's tooling. Can someone explain to me, at length even, what "tooling" is?

This is coming from someone who has written dozens of web applications for PostgreSQL. These are business applications with complex rules and complex SQL like window functions, recursive queries, PL/pgSQL functions, and so on. The only tools I had were vim and psql, and I've been completely happy.

Every time I have had to write an application that uses Microsoft SQL (because it was already set up for a related application) I cringe, because it is a hundred times harder.

paulirwin2• 10 years ago

raises hand and waves excitedly

I'd probably pick PostgreSQL over either of the other two today for any case where my constraint was that I had to have the application run on Linux. Otherwise, I'm going Azure SQL Database or SQL Server if on-prem (as in, non-cloud) is needed. This will change soon with the OP about SQL Server on Linux.

SQL Server Management Studio is an incredible tool and beats the pants off of equivalent free tools like MySQL Workbench and pgAdmin. (SSMS is now freely available without an MSDN subscription or SQL Server license.) Yes, it requires Windows, but compared to the other tools on Windows it is second to none.

Azure SQL Database has been nothing but a good experience to work with. You automatically get 3 highly-available replicas of your database for no extra cost, built-in transparent data encryption, query auditing support, threat detection alerts, near 100% compatibility with SQL Server, and no need to keep the underlying OS or software up to date and secure. All of this for $30/mo (Standard S1 we've found to be adequate for most small businesses with line-of-business type apps.) Depending on the needs of the application, Azure SQL Database can either be a good replacement for an existing SQL Server instance, or a stepping stone towards a larger SQL Server installation. We're seeing many small businesses power down their on-prem/colo SQL Server installs and moving to Azure SQL Database to save on TCO.

SQL Server Express Edition is a free edition that supports up to 10GB databases, so it is perfect for your local development environment (assuming the size constraint allows that). In 2016 SP1, they even added all of the Standard and Enterprise edition features to Express edition like memory-optimized tables and columnstore indexes. With integrated Windows authentication, it is incredibly easy to have your team use a single connection string and for a new dev just install SQL Express and go.

SQL Server Database Projects in Visual Studio are by far the biggest reason for me to prefer Azure SQL Database or SQL Server. This is the most elegant way of storing your database schema in source control that I've ever seen. You define the schema as just CREATE scripts, and when you build you generate a DACPAC with the entire schema defined as if you're creating it from scratch. But upon deployment it determines what objects need to be created, altered, or (if you want) removed to make the target database schema match the normative schema in the DACPAC. So it builds its own migration script based on the schema of the target database, and it won't allow any operations that cause data loss by default. This is super handy in a team environment because you don't need to worry about writing migrations by hand, you just define the schema "as it should be" and no matter what version of the database your team members had on their machine it will get caught up. Also dealing with merge conflicts is easier, because you're just doing a line-by-line merge of the e.g. CREATE TABLE statement rather than having to worry about which order your migrations run in. If anyone knows of something equivalent for MySQL or PostgreSQL I'd love to know!

blakeyrat2• 10 years ago

Just a minor correction: SQL Server Management Studio is free-free. You don't need to own any Microsoft products to use it. (Not even SQL Server, go figure.) Microsoft changed the licensing a few months back.

You can get it here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt238290.aspx

In addition to that, SQL Server Developer Edition is also free-free now. (You do have to log in to get it, though.) Link here: https://myprodscussu1.app.vssubscriptions.visualstudio.com/D...

Arnavion2• 10 years ago

You automatically get 3 highly-available replicas of your database for no extra cost ... All of this for $30/mo (Standard S1

Note that Standards do not have more than one replica. Only Premiums do.

bshb17422• 10 years ago

Regarding SQL Server Express Edition, it is limited in much more ways than just max database size (memory, buffer size, etc). Since SQL Server Developer Edition become free most MSSQL developers I know switched to this one, as it has no limits whatsoever (except one - cannot be touched by end users). MSSQL Express seems more like a DB for small scale production environments now..

jmcqk6• 10 years ago

So it builds its own migration script based on the schema of the target database, and it won't allow any operations that cause data loss by default. This is super handy in a team environment because you don't need to worry about writing migrations by hand, you just define the schema "as it should be" and no matter what version of the database your team members had on their machine it will get caught up

This only works if you're inside their rails. If you do have a change that requires a migration of data and risks data loss, you're then in the realm of creating pre and post-deploy scripts, and you're back on the migration train.

I've been playing around with a tool called sqitch ( http://sqitch.org/ ), but I'm not familiar with it enough to have an opinion on it yet.

thom• 10 years ago

I've worked extensively with both SQL Server and Postgres and money being no object, there are valid reasons to investigate both. SQL Server's query planner is better, Postgres has only just got limited parallelism for some sequential scans, and still treats CTEs as second class citizens. Postgres in version 10 is going to get proper partitioning, which SQL Server has had for years. There are vast numbers of feature differences, down to individual GIS functions one platform has over the other.

fooey• 10 years ago

One other big reason is SQL Studio is fantastic. I've never found anything remotely comparable for PG

evanelias2• 10 years ago

These companies all use MySQL as either their primary database layer, or at least as an essential storage system for a major property or system: Facebook, Google (doubleclick, cloudsql), Twitter, LinkedIn, DropBox, Alibaba, YouTube, WordPress.com, Wikipedia, GitHub, Yahoo, Yelp, Pinterest, Etsy, Tumblr, Flickr, Uber, Box, Booking.com, Instagram (migrating afaik), Lyft (migrating), Amazon (mysql backs DynamoDB)

re: "these days" meaning would these companies still choose MySQL if founded today? Impossible to say for certain, but some of them migrated to MySQL recently. Most have the resources to change databases if there was a compelling reason to do so.

Postgres has many appealing qualities, but so does MySQL (as well as SQL Server). Use the right tool for the task.

t0mas882• 10 years ago

Is there a source somewhere that says Mysql is used behind DynamoDB? As far as I know Amazon is very silent about what is used underneath.

kbumsik• 10 years ago

AFAIK PostgreSQL currently doesn't support in-memory table. In-memory table is blazing fast.

blitzd4• 10 years ago

There are other options for in-memory datastores on Linux though, such as Redis.

olavgg2• 10 years ago

Well at first I thought that you could create an in-memory tablespace. But it doesn't seem like its a good idea though, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7872693/running-postgresq...

So I guess if you need in-memory data, SQLite or Redis are better options.

agacera• 10 years ago

Postgresql is awesome, best open-source RDBMS by far, but MSSQL is more advanced. This is expected since hundreds of developers are being paid by Microsoft to work full-time on it.

For OLAP use cases it is years ahead of Postgres.

sandebert• 10 years ago

I'm curious what results we will see when people start benchmarking it running on the same hardware but Windows in one case and Linux in the other.

Also, what would happen (if anything) if the Linux results crushed the Windows ones? Would that be embarrassing to Microsoft? And to take the thought to the next level of paranoia, let's say Microsoft already ran those benchmarks in-house and found the Linux version vastly faster. To avoid embarrassment, would they slow it down to be more in line with the Windows version?

eknkc• 10 years ago

I'd guess that it would be slower on Linux by design, but not in a malicious way. They must be using various win32 apis and might have needed to shim them on Linux. Maybe they had assumptions on NTFS performance, paging behavior etc. All would contribute to a performance difference.

taspeotis• 10 years ago

They must be using various win32 apis and might have needed to shim them on Linux

Here's a high level overview: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/12/how-an...

manigandham2• 10 years ago

Official blog post from today that shows more details: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/dataplatforminsider/2016...

NicoJuicy• 10 years ago

If I'm not mistaking, SQL is an OS on itselve, so it was designed crossplatform from the start

smnc• 10 years ago

I'm not sure if current releases of SQL Server include the infamous DeWitt clause (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12115397/is-it-against-li...).

easuter2• 10 years ago

Keep in mind that SQL Server has had a role in driving certain windows features which I'm not sure exist natively in the Linux kernel.

IIRC fibers were added to the NT kernel specifically for SQLS.

simtel20• 10 years ago

I have heard this too. However when working with SQL server it was generally recommended (iirc) that fibers not be used except, and were only goof for very specific niches.

userbinator2• 10 years ago

It reminds me of when the Windows version of Firefox was faster running in WINE than the native Linux one... which then begs the question of whether the same could be true of SQL Server.

https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio...

...but it's unfortunately not even installable.

kriro• 10 years ago

Will be very interesting to see how this affects SAP installations. AFAIK the only database options were SQL Server and Oracle. Granted it's been >5 years since I had to deal with this mess but this could be amazing news for some people on SAP who were pretty much forced to run Windows just for the database.

albinary10• 10 years ago

In fact, this is not the case. Actually, besides ORACLE and MS SQL Server you can use also DB2 and other SAP's own DB products(MAXDB, Sybase, HANA). I am talking about ERP and CRM, the main products.

Anyway, this is a very interesting news. Given the "not so good" relationship between SAP and Oracle, this option will give SQL Server a boost when it comes to SAP Customers, although it may take some time for SAP to fully support the Linux-MSSQL option.

jimnotgym2• 10 years ago

SAP Business One is available with SQL server or HANNA. In fact resellers I have been talking to seem to have been instructed to sell HANNA first. I was told with the trade-off of more expensive hardware (HANNA) against more expensive licensing (SQL Server) it would come in about the same cost, but with the advantages of an in-memory database (especially when it comes to analytics) going to HANNA.

walterbell• 10 years ago

Sybase SQL Server 4.2 and Microsoft SQL Server (circa 1993) were identical. The products have since diverged, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybase#History

Sybase 11.0.3.3 for Linux was made free for production use somewhere around 2002. It is still useful for some applications, if you can find the binaries, http://froebe.net/blog/2013/03/10/howto-installing-and-runni...

lobster_johnson2• 10 years ago

I used Sybase ASE on Linux in the early 2000s. It was a joy to use back then. Same dialect of SQL as Microsoft SQL Server, easy to set up and work with.

Microsoft SQL Server has since diverged to the point of being a completely different codebase, whereas Sybase stagnated and were acquired by SAP.

jsmeaton2• 10 years ago

I'm excited about this release because it means that developers of frameworks and libraries that target SQL Server will no longer need to have Windows available to test their software. As a specific example, the SQL server backend for Django could now (soon) be bundled with Django directly and enjoy the same level of support that other backends do. It'll also mean that users will be free to run Django on Linux, and use the drivers to communicate with a windows or Linux based SQL server.

I should note that Django isn't planning to add more backends to the core project, and has actually discussed moving some into separate packages. But that doesn't mean a backend couldn't be developed by the Organisation.

boris• 10 years ago

Microsoft had SQL Server Native Client (ODBC) driver for Linux available for a few years now. So your could develop/test on Linux with SQL Server running in a VM. This is how we have been doing it in ODB (C++ ORM) for years.

Of course, don't expect either of them to be open source. Which means an open source ORM backend that depends on them can't be in an official Debian/Ubuntu/RH repository.

sanxiyn• 10 years ago

It can be in Debian contrib. As a matter of fact, libdbd-oracle-perl is in Debian contrib.

Officially, Debian contrib is not Debian, but there is no practical difference.

snuxoll2• 10 years ago

FreeTDS is "good enough" for every time I've needed to talk with SQL Server, including the various Python/Ruby/etc. drivers built on top of it. Ditto with jTDS for Java. Outside of .Net development I have never used the official Microsoft SQL Server driver.

electrum• 10 years ago

The Microsoft JDBC driver is MIT licensed: https://github.com/Microsoft/mssql-jdbc

jsmeaton2• 10 years ago

The SQL Server running in a VM is precisely the part you no longer have to worry about. Drive by contributors aren't going to do this when offering ORM patches. But if they have an easy way to test on Linux it becomes a lot more viable. Going back to Django, we provide a vagrant image with most databases preinstalled. Adding sqlserver to this setup will now make sense.

Also Microsoft are deprecating the old bindings and are creating new ones I believe will be open source. I might be off slightly.

BuuQu9hu• 10 years ago

There is open source support for contacting MS SQL servers for many years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeTDS

wmccullough• 10 years ago

I too am excited for this, along with the rest of their movement towards adding support for Linux. I know I'll be a die hard C# guy forever (though I still can't help but enjoy learning other tech), but I want a non-windows option. I'd add that though it's nice to have SQL Server on Linux, I'm still waiting for them to make DocumentDB an on-premise installable package. For many people heavily invested in SQL, it is the only tool in their toolbox. Having a Microsoft supported NoSQL option would only help people invested in the Microsoft stack of products. I hate to be cliche, but when you know only SQL, every data problem looks like a SQL nail to be hit with your SQL hammer.

meetbhagdev• 10 years ago

To see how you can use Django via Django-pyodbc-azure(and other frameworks like Laravel, Express.js etc.) with SQL Server check out the tutorials here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/developer-get-sta...

You can connect to SQL Server from Windows, Linux and Mac using Python, Node.js, PHP, Java and C#. This includes integration with frameworks like Django, Laravel, Entity Frameworks, Hibernate etc.

mattkrea2• 10 years ago

I assume it shares the same insane licensing model. I genuinely do not understand how people put up with that (outside of enterprises that normally overpay for everything).

floopidydoopidy• 10 years ago

People associate cost with value.

tyingq2• 10 years ago

SQL 2016 Enterprise 2-pack of Core Licenses $14,256 ($7,128 per core)

SQL 2016 Standard 2-pack of Core Licenses $3,717 ($1,859 per core)

Not cheap, but perhaps attractive compared to Oracle.

mattkrea2• 10 years ago

I stand corrected. Cost is not what I was referencing.. the CAL model was my problem. No software should require a data sheet to understand the licensing.

jimnotgym2• 10 years ago

It is simple, imagine you were the FD of a SME who uses a certain tech, but it is incidental to the business. You have two proposals put to you, and one of them is various strung together FOSS solutions and the other MICROSOFT. You take a personal risk by approving the project. Do you have time/ability to dig down into the risks/payoff for the other solution. £20k on a db from a brand you trust, as part of a £250k project. Would you quibble over it? That is why people pay the money.

heisenbit• 10 years ago

SQL Server, Sharepoint, Active Directory and Office are all platforms in their own right. It does not make sense to constrain them by requiring the windows platform to run.

Balmer was jumping across the stage yelling Developers, Developers, Developers! Now someone in Redmond is executing and pushing the applications and tools platforms. It will be interesting to see where this leaves Windows in the medium term.

kefka• 10 years ago

Well, even though he was completely lambasted and lampooned by "Developers Developers Developers", he wasn't wrong.

We see the 85%/15% split in programming and developing as well. When something is just too good to pass up, a lot of us switch over and start working on the next hotness. Sometimes, those things switch and become the embedded tech you have to learn to get in there. Arduino is one such thing. As is C, and Linux. For DB's, it used to be MySQL, and now PostgreSQL, and large heapings of good/bad for MongoDB and Redis.

Where MS lost for a long time, was the insane amount of bad will towards protocol obfuscation, protocol "extensions" that break IETF protocols, and of course the monopolist behaviors that they were found guilty for.

The problem is they ran away people who'd develop for their platform, and make crazy awesome things. Can't say I blame them. I'm one who ran, and really haven't looked back. And recently, we had a "party" at work, because I was able to wipe the last 2 windows boxes we had. To Linux.

mhurron• 10 years ago

Active Directory

Active directory is not a separate product like the others it is very much a core part of Windows Server. Unless you think AAA parts of an OS are a separate product from the OS, AD is very much tied to Windows.

You could turn AD into just another identity management platform, but you would pretty much lose everything that makes AD awesome. AD is impressive because it is so integral and closely tied to Windows. It begins to lose its lustre when you integrate other platforms because when you lose that close coupling, there's nothing but a distributed user authentication store.

TheRealDunkirk2• 10 years ago

I'm not sure what else you want from a directory server but a "distributed user authentication store." Maybe you're referring to file and print services? Email server integration? All of these kinds of things should be available, regardless of what platform the directory server is running on.

I'd make some long argument about the Linux market longing for an easy-to-use directory server, but I see that Novell Directory Services still lives on as NetIQ, and I've never heard of anyone using it, so maybe the market just isn't there. (Another victim of Microsoft's monopoly.) So maybe it doesn't matter that AD isn't platform independent. I guess companies running a lot of Linux are happy to hassle with the nightmare that is OpenLDAP.

flukus4• 10 years ago

Active directory is not a separate product like the others it is very much a core part of Windows Server. Unless you think AAA parts of an OS are a separate product from the OS, AD is very much tied to Windows.

Which is aggravating when you want to setup a test environment.

voltagex_• 10 years ago

The 16.10 packages seem to be missing and I can't find where to report it.

roryisok• 10 years ago

Anyone know if there's going to be a version of sql express for Linux? I couldn't find any info on it last time I looked

gbrayut• 10 years ago

Yes... They have said that all existing versions in 2016 will have Linux releases including express.

mmgutz• 10 years ago

They say they have top scores on performance benchmarks but weren't those run on Windows servers? Would like to see Linux benchmarks.

digi_owl2• 10 years ago

Heh, Torvalds must be popping a cold one as clearly his victory condition has been fulfilled.

If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds

Scuds• 10 years ago

Given the licencing of an enterprise installation of MSSQLServer, I'd say 'winning' is a relative term.

aNoob7000• 10 years ago

I'm not sure if I'm misinterpreting your comment but paying for software is not bad, even if the software is expensive.

I'd say the simple fact that an enterprise Microsoft product is running natively on Linux is a pretty big win. I guess hell has frozen over.

AsyncAwait2• 10 years ago

I think he already did a while ago[1], [2], [3], [4] etc, but am sure this is a good excuse to open another one. :-)

[1] https://code.visualstudio.com

[2] https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell

[3] https://www.microsoft.com/net/core#linuxfedora

[4] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/

webmaven3• 10 years ago

Of those, I think only #1 and #2 should be considered "applications".

digi_owl2• 10 years ago

Heh, i somehow missed/forgot those.

Also, hilarious that they offer visual studio in not just RPM and DEB but tar-ball as well, never mind 32-bit versions. Thats much more thorough than certain web browsers these days...

ageofwant• 10 years ago

I've been expecting MSLinux for 5 years > now.

I've always thought that Microsoft's operating systems were the Albatross around their neck. Their apps and systems are OK. Having those available on a superior OS, like Linux would be good for the world, and MS.

Buying canonical would probably be the quickest way.

jchannon• 10 years ago

Would you ship your production system database in a container?

chiph• 10 years ago

You might consider it if you have to ship with a lot of pre-loaded data ("vanilla" data), as it'd be easier to do all those inserts/BCP executions just once on a local network and not over the internet.

known• 10 years ago

Satya may have pushed it hard

Corrado2• 10 years ago

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.

sixdimensional2• 10 years ago

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).

systems• 10 years ago

i dont think the BI stack SSAS, SSIS, SSRS ... is part (for now at least) of ms sql on linux

i do hope thought they do provide it and i really hope they provide SSAS and SSIS development tools on linux

paulddraper2• 10 years ago

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)

Corrado2• 10 years ago

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.

TheRealDunkirk2• 10 years ago

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.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/11/sql_server_linux_201...

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.

mcs_• 10 years ago

It is time to port those legacy .net 2.0. to node. At least for me.

Thank Microsoft... good one

gaurav-gupta2• 10 years ago

Microsoft is adapting at a good pace, going beyond the windows ecosystem. Last time I used SQL server, it didn't support sharding across machines, so only supported vertical scaling (unless you buy the appliance or add sharding logic at the application layer). I think that's something they need to fix, to start using SQL server for large scale applications.

Now if they can just fix windows, I might start using that too. Maybe WindowsX? I do enjoy using VSCode on Mac!

webmaven3• 10 years ago

I think you meant WinX: https://www.wired.com/2005/02/microsoft-5/

gaurav-gupta2• 10 years ago

Thanks for sharing this! Its interesting to know Microsoft tried this 10 years ago. They might eventually bring it back, after making sure all their other applications work on ..nix :) They are definitely sowing the seeds now, with .NET support on Linux, adding the ubuntu subsystem, SQL server...

SQL Server on Linux public preview

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