PostgreSQL vs. MS SQL Server

If I was going to pick a relational database system, I'm not sure these would be the criteria I'd use:

CSV support - if you do that much CSV extract/transform/load (or indeed, any kind of ETL work), use an ETL tool. SQL Server comes with SQL Server Integration Services for that kind of thing.

Ergonomics of dropping and creating tables and stored procedures - the author's example is probably the toughest way I can think of to drop a table. It's easier to check sys.all_objects (which will catch anything - functions, views, procs, etc).

Operating system choice - well, in 2015, if you're going to mention that, you should be thinking cloud services anyway. They're both available in the cloud - and at which point, who cares what OS it runs on?

Goes on and on. I'm a SQL Server guy, and if I was going to make a list of how to choose a relational database platform, here's what I'd probably list:

* Up-front cost (license, maintenance)

* Ease of finding staff, and their costs

* Ease of finding tooling, and its cost

* Ease of finding scalable patterns (proven ways to grow it)

I don't think either platform is a loser on those counts - it's hard to go wrong with either one.

Previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8615320

> Commercial products have support from people who support it because they are paid to. They do the minimum amount necessary to satisfy the terms of the SLA.

This is pretty ridiculous and quite a bit insulting to the many people who do work for vendors. I work in a team that has a number of engineers supplied by vendors and they are generally fantastic. Highly qualified, more than happy to assist with tasks that aren't to do with their product and they really care about the overall project outcomes.

Open source has forced vendors to make sure that every project that uses their products are a success.

> On the other hand, commercial software is often designed by committee, written in cube farms and developed without proper guidance or inspiration

Again more nonsense. Not every open source project is some beacon of perfection and neither is every commercial product some poorly designed piece of junk. Anyone that believes otherwise is just being disingenuous.

Someone really needs to explain to me why PostgreSQL users in particular seem to always want to bash the competition in order to justify their technology choice. It's been going on for years against MySQL/Oracle first, then MongoDB/NoSQL and now SQL Server. It's odd.

> In MS SQL Server, a CREATE PROCEDURE statement cannot appear halfway through a batch of SQL statements. There's no good reason for this, it's just an arbitrary limitation. It means that extra manual steps are often required to execute a large batch of SQL. Manual steps increase risk and reduce efficiency.

It's been a while, but I am pretty sure all you have to do is put GO before/after the CREATE PROCEDURE. I'm absolutely positive there's some way around it, because I've run many, many such scripts on SQL Server without manual intervention.

EDIT: Yes, I just fired up a VM and ran this and got the expected results with no errors.

CREATE DATABASE HackerNews;

CREATE TABLE dbo.Test (id int IDENTITY(1, 1), name varchar(20));

GO

INSERT INTO dbo.Test (name) VALUES ('Amezarak');

GO

CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.sp_QueryTest AS SELECT * FROM dbo.Test;

GO

EXEC dbo.sp_QueryTest

In my personal opinion, MSSQL (including the tooling around it) is awesome and possibly one of Microsoft's best products. I actually regret not getting to use it anymore since a) my current job doesn't use it and b) I'm not shelling out for a license for my side projects. Postgres is definitely my next pick, though, and both are miles ahead of MySQL. I understand that MySQL is "good enough" for most people, but it's always painful going back to it and inevitably remembering almost all my favorite features don't exist. I'm stuck with it on a side project and it's frustrating.

So Oracle backport fixes now do they I remember having trouble getting my Oracle based system through y2k back in 98/99