My latest post is over at the Simple-Talk web site. Here’s an extract:
At SQL Pass last week, Tom Casey – General Manager for the SQL Server Business Intelligence unit at Microsoft – made the point that "SQL Server is not really a database – it is a database platform and it has been a shift from a relational database to an end to end solution".
I find this interesting. When I use a database, I want a database and not a platform. I want to store and retrieve data in a way that’s fast, secure, easy to use and quick to learn. Watching what Microsoft is doing with SQL Server I’m left wondering if they are slowly drifting into bloatware.
You can read more, and vote, at Simple-Talk.
Looking at the sky, I am left wondering if that is really blue that I am seeing, or perhaps a kind of red that I’m unfamiliar with…
SQL 2005 is already more comparable to Oracle or PostgreSQL than SQL 2000 or MySQL, so yes, 2008 will be more so. Note the length of time associated with installation and tuning of these platforms, and you’ll see that the first three require much more attention to get adequate results than the last two. This is bloat.