Microsoft SQL Server is ideal for highly available SQL workloads by using SQL Server Always On availability groups. Microsoft SQL Server might not be appropriate for solutions which require a very low resource footprint, since it requires significant CPU cores and RAM memory as well as high IOPS, always depending on the usage scenario.
If you have to manage a lot of different databases from different vendors, you could do well by standardizing on this product. It checks all the boxes for a proper database management studio. You would only have to learn one product to manage them all. However, if you are looking to find a good product for a single database vendor, you might be better off finding a tool that was designed specifically for that vendor product.
Foreign Key Constraint data viewer! This was a tremendously helpful feature that not many other products have. Just pick a constraint and see the data in the child tables! No setup required!
Somewhat laggy performance. Boot up speed was on the slow side and connecting to our database servers was also a little slower than other products.
User interface can be a little clunky. Instead of the usual tree view of servers, databases, and schemas, you are presented with lists that you click on and get new windows to pick the new list of data from. Not organized efficiently.
I think it is unlikely that sql server has disappointed someone, it is likely that someone will come initially discouraged if the needs and problems that occur are very challenging, but definitely have a SQL oriented system means having a solid base to work and on which maintain the their data securely
SQL Server mostly 'just works' or generates error messages to help you sort out the trouble. You can usually count on the product to get the job done and keep an eye on your potential mistakes. Interaction with other Microsoft products makes operating as a Windows user pretty straight forward. Digging through the multitude of dialogs and wizards can be a pain, but the answer is usually there somewhere.
We managed to handle most of our problems by looking into Microsoft's official documentation that has everything explained and almost every function has an example that illustrates in detail how a particular functionality works. Just like PowerShell has the ability to show you an example of how some cmdlet works, that is the case also here, and in my opinion, it is a very good practice and I like it.
Other than SQL taking quite a bit of time to actually install there are no problems with installation. Even on hardware that has good performance SQL can still take close to an hour to install a typical server with management and reporting services.
Microsoft SQL is slower than MySQL and Access but far more feature-rich and reliable. Access is almost obsolete nowadays, so not too many people are considering it, but unless budget or an open-source ethos is a factor, Microsoft SQL is superior in every way. Many commonly used tools, like Crystal Reports, support it.
Compared to Microsoft's SQL Management Studio, Valentina studio was comparable, just harder to get used to in the UI department. It ran slightly slower than other products but did save some time with neat features they baked into the product. However, in using DBeaver Community and DBForge Studio for PostgreSQL from Devart, we found different products that the team ultimately decided to use. DBeaver has all of the features we needed most (minus the constraint data viewer) and a more intuitive UI that we were used to. DBForge Studio for PostgreSQL has a very standard Windows look and feel and lacks some features, like database/table designers, but makes up for those shortcomings in the much easier filtering and sorting options right in the data grids. You can even write a query and edit the data returned, which is something we don't see in many of these tools. Our team ultimately settled on the developers using DBeaver and the support team that needs data viewing/editing capabilities using DBForge Studio.
Increased accuracy - We went from multiple users having different versions of an Excel spreadsheet to a single source of truth for our reporting.
Increased Efficiency - We can now generate reports at any time from a single source rather than multiple users spending their time collating data and generating reports.
Improved Security - Enterprise level security on a dedicated server rather than financial files on multiple laptop hard drives.
