Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#21

Post by StrawberryFrog » Mon, Sep 07, 2009, 2:51 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #13

javery wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely, Windows isn't that expensive (look at the difference in EC2 pricing) but SQL Server is where they get you. It's not Oracle bad, but for a small startup it might as well be.

I haven't really paid attention recently, but at a conference several years ago a former Microsoft sales rep said that nearly every "enterprise" product they sold required accompanying SQL Server licenses.

Most "enterprise" products are complex enough to need some complex backing store. A SQL server database is a natural choice for this in the MS world. Even TFS (source control and associated work item tracking, kitchen sink, etc.) is backed by one. This is not a bad thing, (e.g. you get atomic transactions from the DB), but it's interesting that most other source control systems are not backed by any relational database.

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#22

Post by desu » Mon, Sep 07, 2009, 2:51 PM UTC

acg wrote: post #4

On the Microsoft stack side, everyone knows about Visual Studio. The licensing cost for the Team Suite is $10,939. LAMP developers just love to point that kind of thing out. But folks, the fact is, that price is not measurable as the equivalent of LAMP freeware. It’s for an enterprise shop that needs very advanced and sophisticated tools for performing every corporate software role in a software development lifecycle…

Not to mention the subtle insinuation that the open source "freeware" is just a toy and everyone knows you have to pay for the real stuff.

I cannot imagine how Microsoft developers begin a project. "Today, I'm going to write this new web app to change the world! Right after I spend the day setting up Microsoft Team Studio and purchasing software licenses for every computer I plan to use!" How inspiring.

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#23

Post by gaius » Mon, Sep 07, 2009, 2:51 PM UTC

javery wrote: post #6

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #5

Of all of Microsoft's technologies, I have considered SQL Server, because from what I've seen it is an extremely powerful database engine with really good BI tools. There are two reasons I don't use it though: 1) it would be prohibitively expensive (for me anyways) to use across dozens of nodes and 2) it means introducing Windows into my environment, which quickly becomes very expensive and a nuisance.

I agree completely, Windows isn't that expensive (look at the difference in EC2 pricing) but SQL Server is where they get you. It's not Oracle bad, but for a small startup it might as well be.

A small startup would sign up to the BizSpark programme, tho'.

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#24

Post by trapper » Mon, Sep 07, 2009, 2:54 PM UTC

bengtan wrote: post #12

I don't trust a Windows server to provide reliable uptime. I have no other arguments that I wish to make.

We recently deployed a system (linux based on a windows server with vmware) on a huge infrastructure provider. Every week the box was going down, and we asked why - it's because they reboot ALL microsoft servers once per week, across the entire infrastructure. He claimed they were so unreliable it's good practice. WTF?

Uptime on my first linux production server box was over 4 years.

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#25

Post by DanielBMarkham » Mon, Sep 07, 2009, 2:55 PM UTC

asnyder wrote: post #9

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is, by far, a vastly superior RDBMS than most anything I have seen from anyone, in every respect 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.

All the research I've seen shows Microsoft consistently in the top three as far as sales, and in the top two as far as sales on the windows platform. This has held true over many, many years.

Got some points you'd like to make that amount to something?

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#26

Post by desu » Mon, Sep 07, 2009, 2:58 PM UTC

Windows can also execute all the Java and Ruby stuff that you see in nix platforms.*

Really? Hit any Ruby mailing list and every second post is a Windows user complaining that something doesn't work. Not just obscure things either - DataMapper doesn't work on Windows, or didn't a few months ago. Capistrano, the "official" Rails deployment tool, is not supported on Windows. And good luck with any gem that requires compilation.

Not to mention you lose out on all the command line tools. You'll need to install cygwin, of course. At that point you may as well just stop trying to run unix on a Windows box and just, you know, run Unix.

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#27

Post by DrJokepu » Mon, Sep 07, 2009, 2:59 PM UTC

StrawberryFrog wrote: post #19

asnyder wrote: post #9

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is, by far, a vastly superior RDBMS than most anything I have seen from anyone, in every respect 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.

Which ones do you think is one a par with it, and why? "vastly" may be an overstatement, but it's very good. 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…

Well, while SQL Server has its merits, I wouldn't consider it vastly superior (or superior at all) to Oracle or IBM DB2, although SQL Server 2008 is indeed getting very close.

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.

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#28

Post by windsurfer » Mon, Sep 07, 2009, 3:00 PM UTC

I know as a student, it's waaaay too expensive. I could eithter get 4 months of rent, or a legal copy of some microsoft software. Guess which one I chose?

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#29

Post by tvon » Mon, Sep 07, 2009, 3:16 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #25

asnyder wrote: post #9

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is, by far, a vastly superior RDBMS than most anything I have seen from anyone, in every respect 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.

All the research I've seen shows Microsoft consistently in the top three as far as sales, and in the top two as far as sales on the windows platform. This has held true over many, many years. Got some points you'd like to make that amount to something?

Sales don't magically equate to better technology or a superior product.

Re: Is The Microsoft Stack Really More Expensive?

#30

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 07, 2009, 3:19 PM UTC

StrawberryFrog wrote: post #19

asnyder wrote: post #9

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is, by far, a vastly superior RDBMS than most anything I have seen from anyone, in every respect 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.

Which ones do you think is one a par with it, and why? "vastly" may be an overstatement, but it's very good. 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…

[deleted]