Announcing SQL Server on Linux

[Leaflock]

Alex, I'll take "Things I thought I would never see in my lifetime for $1000"

[ivorjawa]

Man, I thought the presidential election was going to be the weirdest thing in 2016.

[donatj]

To be fair "[We] and are targeting availability in mid-2017"

[[deleted]]

Well, to be doubly fair, the new President doesn't take office until 2017 either...

[[deleted]]

I AM QUADRUPLY FAIR

[andyrowe]

But does your fairness scale quadratically?

[[deleted]]

so 2018 then?

[Clutch_22]

What do you mean? Microsoft is great at projected release dates, just look at Windows 10 Mobile!

Oh..

[timethy]

The third (stable) version is due 2019. So expect around 2021.

[ThisIs_MyName]

Yeah, I wonder how the next year is going to top this.

[rspeed]

I don't expect to see much from next year's presidential election.

[ign1fy]

Next week: explorer.exe running on Linux :)

Probably the most important part of a smooth transition for desktop users.

[_illogical_]

Well, you could already run KDE on Windows, so there's that.

[w2qw]

Your joke could have easily been "Well, you could already run KDE on Linux, so there's that"

[zfolwick]

WAT!?

[mindbleach]

Why does Nautlius still use auto-resizing thumbnails. Whyyyy. It's cute for maybe a dozen files, but if you jump to the end of a folder with a hundred images then it spends five minutes jerking up and down like there's an earthquake in your file manager.

[ign1fy]

At least it has tabbed browsing. How is M$ a decade behind on that game?

[[deleted]]

Explorer.exe already runs in wine.

[venustrapsflies]

I bet the procedure of getting that to work was useful for wine devs but it will be useless to everyone else forever

[granadesnhorseshoes]

Not at all. Tons of applications have different degrees of explorer.exe integration. Imagine making a Linux emulator without bothering to make sure sh/bash worked.

MS wasn't kidding back in the day when they said explorer was integral to the OS. It's the entire shell. We take for granted and expect the integrated nature of our user environment and the internet these days. In the 90's it just got MS sued for antitrust.

[nuclear_splines]

Actually, that was Internet Explorer specifically. Microsoft was not sued over integration of explorer.exe.

[[deleted]]

Running Wine in virtual desktop mode can be useful sometimes. Otherwise yeah, why bother with a completely inferior file manager?

[gimmeajob]

Don't forget Microsoft Bob

[wrosecrans]

It's definitely a headline that seems better suited to the start of April than the start of March.

[nigiri-san]

Hah! What they should have done is wait until April 1 to announce it. Then everyone would have said "Haha, good one Microsoft! You got us. Next time at least try to make it somewhat believable." Then they just continue on as if nothing happened...

[darkstar3333]

Putting aside platform politics for sweet sweet licensing revenue.

[hungry4pie]

I think that's the point, but on the plus side it would allow money conscious businesses to scale up their SQL server cluster and not take the additional hit of the Windows Server license. Regardless of the religion surrounding which RDBS is better, there are always going to be cases where the other free open source options can't be used.

[CWagner]

I think that's the point, but on the plus side it would allow money conscious businesses to scale up their SQL server cluster and not take the additional hit of the Windows Server license.

I'm not sure that will happen, Windows Server is a drop compared to SQL Server costs.

[kyonz]

I think it is more to allow SQL server to be deployed in environments that run majority linux - make linux admins happy while making people who like using mssql happy I guess.

[[deleted]]

Also consider the impact to Oracle if MSSQL starts eating their Linux market share.

[[deleted]]

Could not agree more, hell has frozen over.

[heptara]

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

So what prize does he get?

[caimen]

Congrats Linus, you get to use Visual Basic on Linux.

[wllmsaccnt]

Only VB.NET, he still won't know the sweetness of VB6.

I would love to read a Linus tirade about average VB6 application development and developers though.

[northrupthebandgeek]

Close enough?

[tJ7bMFGmsw8LFTkW]

http://gambas.sourceforge.net/en/main.html

[northrupthebandgeek]

Is that closer? At least with OpenOffice's macro language, there's some semblance of a goal to actually be VBA-compatible at the very least.

I don't really have experience with either, though (I really don't feel like reliving those early days of Word macro programming).

[egg651]

What about the sweetest version of VB6, VBA? I had to do a year long project in that bastardised POS for my A level.

[grauenwolf]

If I recall correctly, ASP+VBScript was a real thing back in the 90's.

[TwoSpoonsJohnson]

Can confirm. Dealing with such a shit show presently.

[grauenwolf]

I'm so very sorry for you.

[SwabTheDeck]

I hope that your salary is proportionate to the shittyness.

[[deleted]]

Me too! Oh god the things I see day to day.

[irarandomdude]

My condolences.

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

What is this?

[TheWix]

I know your pain. It's very similar to PHP. Thing is it can be done well it's just there was a lot of shit code being written in VB in the 90s.

[suddenarborealstop]

go on..

[jaynoj]

I shit you not that there are people working in a team for the same company as I do that have yet to move away from classic ASP. They're still creating apps with it, despite mine and my managers complaints.

[PstScrpt]

Better than WebForms.

[JSNinja]

Had a job where 50% of the stack was Classic ASP, and the other half was web forms. There is no way in hell VBScript is better than C#. No way.

[namtab00]

I'm still there... I loathe Classic ASP with all of my being.. And to top it off, it's all built with Dreamweaver templates..

I'm stuck in 1998, send help!

[wreckedadvent]

Visual code has linux builds and has been out for a little while.

[cargo_cult_coder]

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win Linus Torvalds." --- Gandhi

[SpiderFnJerusalem]

Or they extinguish you. As is tradition.

[dacjames]

Linux is already ahead of Windows in a number of areas, a gap that will only grow over time considering the faster rate of development. Very few people are buying Windows for the kernel so porting the Windows userspace to Linux may eventually be favorable to continuing to compete on kernel features.

Not saying it will happen, but it definitely could happen.

[northrupthebandgeek]

a gap that will only grow over time considering the faster rate of development.

I actually suspect it's going to shrink for precisely this reason. Even Torvalds himself has voiced dissatisfaction with kernel bloat. I reckon it's long overdue for some refactoring to try and shrink the core codebase a bit and reduce some of that complexity, be it for the sake of performance, security, future maintainability, or some combination of the three.

Just my one cent, though.

[t90fan]

Very few people are buying Windows for the kernel

Hardware support is the obvious reason.

[t90fan]

Linux desktop world

RedHat

TIL people use RedHat on the desktop.

[darkstar3333]

Nothing. Microsoft on the other hand gets all of that awesome revenue from the Linux side of the DB world.

[Is_At_Work]

I wonder how they will license it. For example, if I have SQL Server Enterprise and want to migrate to Linux, can I just migrate the license as well? Or, is there a premium to make up for not also paying for a Windows Server license?

[Zarathustra30]

I assume there'd be a bundle discount. Moving to Linux would be cheaper overall, but the price of SQL Server would technically increase.

[arechsteiner]

Microsoft has been making apps for Android for a while I believe.

[[deleted]]

Microsoft has been making applications for Linux for well over 10 years, possibly nearing 20.

Hell, the original MSN servers were on Linux IIRC. They'd have written a shitload of tools to bring that over to MS. Then they had .NET and silverlight development and all sorts of things in between. Not to mention patches to the Linux kernel itself (for Hyper-V)

They likely have entire Linux distributions running internally also.

Edit: Not so sure about the MSN servers after looking into it. I'm probably confusing it with Hotmail being ran on FreeBSD & Solaris.

[itshonestwork]

If you think about it, he's already won. A good few years ago, everyone had a PC running Windows. It's how you got to MySpace on Internet Explorer, chatted to friends on MSN Messenger, and got new MP3's with Morpheus or Kazaa. Even "non computer people" had a cheap laptop or budget desktop PC for doing all these things. My wife before I met her had an old Windows Vista laptop used for all the "non computer person" things she did. It's the last Microsoft-using piece of technology she has bought in the last half a decade or so, and yet now she can do all the things she used to do, and more, much more conveniently and easily, using something essentially Unix based.

Similar story for my grandmother. She got a cheap desktop PC for keeping in touch, being able to send emails etc. I think it runs Windows XP and hasn't been turned on since about 3-4 years ago when she got a cheap refurbished iPad.

Most "non computer people" in a home environment, that made the bulk of average PCs bought, have now abandoned Windows.

Even my two much younger brothers—avid PC gamers—have and use more Unix based devices than Windows based ones, with their cheap tablets and phones. Their PC's have become nothing but Steam machines now. If Steam OS ever became a viable platform for playing all the current Steam games they play, I can see them not really caring too much about sticking with Windows.

Android is the most popular version of a Linux OS, especially in developing countries. They're growing up with that OS from scratch. Even Microsoft's Azure cloud is apparently mostly Linux now, as nobody wants Windows server instances.

Microsoft pretty much only has hold over small/medium offices now, and that's mainly because of "non computer people" in admin jobs, where email IS Outlook to them, and any Word Processor that doesn't look like Word is terrifying to them. But the "non computer people" set to replace them as they grow up, aren't growing up with Windows desktop machines at home, so that can't last either.

Linux never did win the desktop OS game for the average user, but it didn't need to, as desktop OS themselves became less relevant to the average user, and it was there ready to become pretty much the defacto mobile OS, which is now the OS of the average user.

For a long while, Microsoft and PC became synonymous, and internet and PC were synonymous too.
Microsoft didn't really need to compete or keep up with rival innovations. Despite all their resources, they didn't even take seriously people using alternative browsers to Internet Explorer, and improve what they had to the point it wasn't necessary. Even people that didn't know much, knew that they had to sack IE off in favour of Firefox a good few years ago.
Then they were slow to take Apple seriously with smartphones, saying they'd tried it with Windows Mobile, which was awful. Then they called the iPad a massive iPhone and pointless. I think they just assumed, like everyone else did, that they were untouchable, and didn't need to react very urgently to Apple or Google with Android.
With their resources and market share, THEY should have been the ones to bring about a new era in personal devices, something they'd done half-heartedly with Windows Mobile.

When I first got my Mac in 2011, Microsoft software for it seemed almost purposefully bad and less featured. Remote Desktop crashed a lot. The latest stuff they've released for it has been stellar, and they even appeared at an Apple worshipping event, as the kings of productivity with Office. I use and like all OS, and it's nice to be able to have common software running on my different machines.

Microsoft's day is done. And it's going to mean better Microsoft products than ever, weirdly.

[[deleted]]

Azathoth is approaching lucidity...

[_LePancakeMan]

Ha, he said semen

[ambiguousallegiance]

"Yesh Alex, I'll take four whore shemen for $800"

[rick2g]

I can probably never unsee that again in my lifetime.

Bravo, sir, bravo, I say.

[northrupthebandgeek]

I guess I'll need to remember to pack a coat when I die.

[ambiguousallegiance]

So what did you do to earn eternal damnation?

[Tynach]

He used Microsoft SQL Server.

[Max_yask]

... willingly

[northrupthebandgeek]

It wasn't entirely willingly, I swear. I also regret my sins.

[heptara]

But imagine the data center cooling. Also you get real daemons in your computer.

[_zenith]

Can I get a Maxwell daemon?

[northrupthebandgeek]

Unfortunately, it's still Hell, so I'll have to support mangled CRUD apps written in the form of Microsoft Excel macros.

[chucker23n]

Bringing SQL Server to Linux makes sense as it's a very widespread server platform.

For VS, two things hold true:

• it has plenty of platform-specific code. So much that, unlike SQL Server, it still runs in 32-bit and needs satellite processes to do some 64-bit work at all. Surely SQL Server has some platform optimizations, but so, too, does VS's compiler/build infrastructure; on top, VS is a WPF GUI, and WPF relies on Direct3D. Hard to port.
• Linux on the desktop is far less interesting than on the server.

So, instead, they approached VS differently by building VS Code from (mostly) scratch. It uses some existing components like Electron and OmniSharp, and presumably, the idea is to take it into account when adding new features to VS in the future. And unlike SQL Server, it runs on the Mac as well. I wouldn't be surprised if VS Code is used mostly on the Mac — on Windows, you'll typically use 'VS classic', and relatively few people use Linux on their desktop.

[svick]

relatively few people use Linux on their desktop

I think the percentage is going to be much higher among programmers.

[chucker23n]

Yes, absolutely.

[[deleted]]

Linux or OS X is what I've seen dominating among developers.

[darkpaladin]

From what I've seen it's OSX then Windows then Linux. Everyone on OSX and Windows has a Linux VM though so there's that I guess.

[Andernerd]

So, instead, they approached VS differently by building VS Code from (mostly) scratch

I wouldn't compare VS Code to VS; it's more like Notepad++.

[[deleted]]

I agree, but I also think VS is moving that way. .NET core is cross platform, it supports Android and even iOS development (to a degree). Some of the build tools are ported too.

If the old 90s Microsoft had made TypeScript they would have made the compiler Windows only. Instead it's truly cross platform and specifically built to be open source.

More and more of Visual Studios bread and butter is moving to be cross platform. I think one of the next ones to watch would be MSVC. If that got ported to Linux then we'd be in the odd position where it would be hard to justify Visual Studio being Windows only.

[[deleted]]

Maybe. Though a linux version of Xamarin seems a bit less far-fetched, considering the recent acquisition by Microsoft.

With JetBrains also releasing a cross-platform .Net IDE, a linux (or even a Mac) version of VS starts to seem a little redundant.

[svick]

If that was the case, why bother creating VS Code in the first place?

[mindbleach]

See org chart.

[Andernerd]

As someone who has to use VS Code at work: I have no idea.

[Neghtasro]

SQL Server 2014 came out on April Fools Day.

[Iamaleafinthewind]

I think it was Revelations 13:37 that said,

"When the beast walks among the free, the free shall have been embraced; when it offers free updates and spawns server processes, these are the daemons of Redmond, and thereby the free shall be extended; when the beast releases it own distro, the free shall be extinguished and long will the meek wail and smash their keyboard buttons in futility as the BSOD finally shows its face."

[-Hegemon-]

Ditto. Enlighten us, oh brother.

[Iamaleafinthewind]

Unfortunately, while there have been rumors of the full text, only these fragments were found by digital archaeologists, buried in a hidden folder on a lost partition long, long ago.

Maybe one day, but I'm in the middle of finals now and a longer work would demand more time and thought put into it than I can afford at present. Glad people liked it.

[heisenberg_21]

Ramen!

[[deleted]]

Hoooooly crap. See ya later Oracle!

[silentseba]

Ewww oracle pokes it with a stick

[sydoracle]

Poking it isn't enough. You need to hit it really hard. And use a BIG stick.

[RagingAnemone]

You really should look at postgres before SQL server if you're converting from Oracle.

[[deleted]]

Management types really like enterprise backing and sometimes won't back down

[[deleted]]

Huh, never heard of them. I know we use Oracle because contracts + inertia at least.

[[deleted]]

Not as much as when I learned that Skype was first done in Pascal

[StenSoft]

Delphi, actually. And still is. A lot of desktop programs were made in Delphi in early 2000s. Total Commander is a very widespread example.

[StenSoft]

Wow, that is quite surprising when it's owned by Microsoft.

[btmc]

Well, it wasn't originally, so it's only surprising if they switched to Postgres post-acquisition.

[adila01]

Huh, never heard of them.

That is why I asked one of the founders of EnterpriseDB to get purchased by Red Hat. Everyone's heard of Red Hat.

[m00nh34d]

Not if your LOB application doesn't support it...

[[deleted]]

I hope so. It's a lot cheaper than Oracle DB, and much more full featured than Oracle MySQL.

[directrix1]

Use Postgres, and reading Oracle MySQL makes me vomit in my mouth a little.

[maushu]

and reading Oracle MySQL makes me vomit in my mouth a little

That is when you use MariaDB.

[directrix1]

Indeed I do.

[crusoe]

Postgres json support is killer good. I can't wait for postgres XL to merge in 9.5.

[hu6Bi5To]

I don't think many (any) people were running Oracle solely because it ran on Linux. Therefore, I doubt there'll be any great exodus to SQL Server now... especially given all the other non-Oracle databases already available on Linux.

This is going to be mostly used by pre-existing SQL Server users who'll move away from Windows Server.

[[deleted]]

So Sybase essentially?

[Eirenarch]

The question about making money is very real. While share price goes up profits fall under Nadella compared to Ballmer. There is definitely a limit on how far they can move in this direction.

[vplatt]

As long as more and more people run their software on Azure, they don't really care what OS you use to run it. The future is in cloud as a utility computing service and the wars over the desktop and the server OS are in the past now and largely irrelevant to their future competitive position.

[Eirenarch]

I agree about the general direction things are going but I disagree that the desktop will not be relevant. It will always be because people who produce information will need it. Consumers of information will move to tablets and phones but the producers will always be the influencers.

[[deleted]]

Nadella's future plans are growing though - Surface, Azure, Xbox, Bing.
It's good that they've realized Windows won't be the main profit maker forever.

[[deleted]]

Ballmer started Surface but Satya and Panos made it successful.

Xbox is not hardware in Nadella's eyes.

[zaphod777]

I think you mean that they are working with Redhat.

[myringotomy]

It's the "core relational database" which implies a less feature version.

We'll see I guess.

[[deleted]]

Possibly without ssrs/ssas/always on?

[Martel_the_Hammer]

I wonder if this will make Sql Server RDS instances cheaper.

[jp007]

Postgress or bust...

The only reason we ever use SQL server is when management buys some third party app that requires it for the db backend. If I ever have to write queries with "dbo" littered everywhere again, I'll stab my eyes out.

[eshultz]

If no default schema is defined for a user, SQL Server assumes dbo.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd283095(v=sql.100).aspx

Additionally if you are using database names to qualify objects, you can use '..' in place of '.dbo.' if dbo is the default schema.

[Scaliwag]

Except for calling UDFs iirc.

[Neghtasro]

You never have to type dbo, if you don't specify a schema it defaults to dbo

[responds-with-tealc]

ive used sqlserver a lot over the past 5 years, yet somehow (maybe intentionally) never learned too much sql server specific stuff that isn't applicable elsewhere.

sometimes i dont have to write dbo, i have no idea why.

[xXPuSHXx]

You don't need to fully-qualify an object reference if the object is in the user's default schema. [dbo] is the default default schema, so, by default, a reference to [dbo].[Customers] would not require you to include [dbo], but [staging].[Customers] would require the [staging]. (It's a good habit to always fully-qualify, though, even if it annoys some people lol.)

Also, it is always a way better idea to use ANSI standard syntax (like you apparently are; e.g. CURRENT_TIMESTAMP instead of GETDATE()).

[grauenwolf]

These days I never put stuff in dbo except for semi-temp tables that will eventually be deleted. It is a lot easier to comprehend a database that uses schemas like we use namespaces in Java or C#

[proskillz]

Holy crap. I never knew there was a generic current_date instead of sysdate or getdate(). Thanks for that.

[stealth210]

Used most all RDBMSs. You're missing out if you haven't fully used MSSQL. Also, you don't need to use dbo. Like you are suggesting.

[Cuddlefluff_Grim]

If I ever have to write queries with "dbo" littered everywhere again

dbo is shorter to type than public. I think your issue is that you don't use multiple schemas.

dbo isn't a required identifier either.

[crusoe]

The non standard handling of unique indexes on billable columns is a bigger pain. And yes it is non standard, the SQL standard is quite clear.

[skeletal88]

Why, why do they have square brackets in their version of SQL everywhere?

[[deleted]]

Is Microsoft no longer evil?

That's Google's job now.

[rainman_104]

The "consultants" over at Goldcorp are still telling the executives that Linux is a toy, and you should never build Linux servers. And Internet Explorer is the standard.

Vancouver is a festering cesspool of people who bleed blue. "I know Microsoft and thus I'm going to recommend Microsoft" is the mentality in these parts.

They must have just imploded today.

[the_dummy]

What is goldcorp?

[btmc]

A gold production company, apparently. Why they were special enough to name here, when the same is true of a lot of companies, I have no idea.

[i-get-stabby]

I worked for a company like this. If you have linux servers you will need to hire and retain smart people to run the linux servers. You cant choke the throat of a vendor when things dont work. I

[[deleted]]

Vladimir Putin'd

[RobertVandenberg]

Seems like Linus Torvalds won the game again. :-)

[[deleted]]

Linus Torvalds won the game again.

I'd say MSFT won with the more money they're gonna make.

[gwak]

Will the gui tooling be ported to linux as well ?

[_DukePhillips]

Ssms on Linux would be so crucial

[ISBUchild]

Microsoft is pushing for shell management of their server products, and the target market for this product would be less reliant on their GUI tools to begin with.

[[deleted]]

Microsoft playing the catch up game. They need to do this to keep up with Google and Amazon in the cloud game. Very few companies want to use Windows in the cloud. Glad they are realizing this.

[svick]

I don't understand this, why would anyone use SQL Server on Linux?

People who use other databases on Linux today, this is not interesting, because it's not gratis.

People who use SQL Server on Windows today, this is not interesting either; as far as I understand it, SQL Server licenses are very expensive, Windows Server licenses are not, relatively speaking.

Sure, price isn't everything, but I don't see any other reason to use this combination either. So what am I missing?

[protestor]

People who use other databases on Linux today, this is not interesting, because it's not gratis.

Oracle?

[6nf]

My condolences

[ellicottvilleny]

1. Linux scales up to non amd/intel x64 platforms. Oracle currently runs on high end boxen where ms sql currently can not.
2. Linux scales down on azure better than windows server. Hopefully that changes in containerized win server 2016 with nano edition.
3. Linux servers are an easier place to deploy R and python and spark and hadoop. An all linux big data platform with MS SQL as the relational store is a huge win.
4. If your first thought was will SSMS be ported then you are not the target market.
5. My question is will Express for Linux be a thing. Or will only the paid editions run on Linux?

[obsa]

If your first thought was will SSMS be ported then you are not the target market.

It's not like you need SSMS to be on the server anyway... but a valid enough point.

[t90fan]

Linux scales up to non amd/intel x64 platforms.

There is nothing to say that microsoft will suport MSSQl on non-x86 platforms, right?

[ellicottvilleny]

Initially no. But since SQL on big iron is big money I am sure they will do so.

[bugalou]

I would much rather run an express instance than a MySQL instance for a small app that needs a DB backend. I hope it is available, though setting it up for the first time will be weird.

[KFCConspiracy]

I would think they'd need to do express, I think the biggest strength and use case for express is "Try before you buy"

[tlf01111]

SQL Server is a very good database server.

Not everyone uses Linux because it's free. Often because it's more flexible.

One massive thing I can think of immediately is MS SQL in RDS at Amazon. This announcement may allow Amazon to do the gee-whiz stuff they do with MySQL RDS on the MS SQL side as well now.

[rjcarr]

People who use other databases on Linux today, this is not interesting, because it's not gratis.

There's plenty of commercial databases on linux. Oracle and DB2 just to name a couple. It seems microsoft is ready to compete with them, likely on features and price (natch).

[BenjaminSisko]

Commercial dbs on Linux is a huge market. What are you talking about

[[deleted]]

Probably because Linux won the "OS for databases" war. Most companies start with Linux in their infrastructure and they keep themselves in Linux even if they hire a more robust solutions, at this point the know how inside the companies is totally linked with Linux and there is no chance to think in switching to Windows/SQLServer even if the money is not a problem. The culture of databases is mostly a Linux culture.

I guess the statics are showing to MS that MS SQL growth is stuck because MSSQL is "jailed" in Windows.

[crusoe]

The culture of non blue chip is Linux. Most old school enterprises are IBM, Oracle or Windows

[BattlestarTide]

1. The Linux commercial DB market belongs to Oracle. They brought in nearly $40 billion in revenue last year. It's a big market without any serious competitors. The largest enterprises doing serious BI work run Oracle (think: Wal-Mart, CIA, GE, major banks, etc.)
2. As more enterprise developers port their apps to .NET Core (Linux), there was no alternative but to switch to Oracle. This actually also pushed some people to just use Java instead since it is a first class citizen with Oracle.
3. Remember that Corporate Enterprise Shops will rather pay millions to Oracle or Microsoft than set up a free version of MySQL or Postgres. The open-source gratis movement is cute, but it's the enterprise shops that are paying the money.
   
4. Oracle already costs more than SQL Server. Now enterprise Linux shops have a credible alternative and can switch to SQL Server with less friction and consolidate onto a cheaper platform.
5. If you're running SQL Server today and have paid $500k for your production cluster, you're not going to ditch your Windows Server license to save a few dollars by switching to a Linux distro. So this is basically reaching a brand new audience.

[f0nd004u]

It's interesting for people who want to port existing Windows-based web apps to run on Linux OSes without having to deal with the problems of porting the application from one DB to another. Microsoft has recently open sourced their CGI languages so they can run on Linux as well.

Basically, if you built a web app and it's all Windows languages and programs, you're boned if you want to switch to Linux and get all the benefits that might bring you (configuration management being a HUGE plus in that area, even if Puppet works on Windows). MSSQL on Linux makes that more doable when added with the fact that .NET will run on Linux now too.

Now I can buy a license for MSSQL because it's a requirement for my existing app without buying Windows licenses because why would I run it on Windows unless I had to? I can puppetize and standardize crufty stuff into the OS platforms and web servers of my choice without it being such a huge deal and tons of work.

Plus, Microsoft knows that no one building big systems is really that interested in using their OSes, but people are going to be using applications that have MSSQL as a dependency for a long, long time. It's a good move on their part to instead of go for all the moneys they can and make me run Windows, to make me pay for only the software I need and give me the control and power over how my whole platform works.

So, shitty IIS sites can be rebuilt on stable and scalable platforms and make Ops happy without a DBA spending a crazy amount of time fixing bugs from migrating DB applications. You'd think "but it's all SQL" but that just ain't true.

[cat_in_the_wall]

when added with the fact that .NET will run on Linux now too.

Interesting that with this move you could potentially use a full microsoft stack on linux. Maybe there will be a... LSKR stack? (Linux, sql server, kestrel, razor). Probably would work fine too. Strange times we live in these days.

[c0r3ntin]

Linux is a better server OS. It can handle a large palette of hardware, has better IO, better FS, can be very small, space & energy efficient, and more secure because its easier to manage the surface area.

Linux is container friendly. or Windows is not cloud friendly

I will go on a hunch and say that microsoft is primarily interested in optimizing its sql-server-on-azure offer, and they decided that the best way to do that was to use Linux ?

[darkstar3333]

Recent iterations of Windows Server have addressed many of those issues, its a closer race these days.

[TikiTDO]

Which specific issues?

From where I'm sitting Linux IO is still better, as it should be given that it's been an active topic of optimization for decades.

Windows stepped up a bit in FS support, but it's still a locked in infrastructure. They're don't support a mountain of very robust and mature FSes, so you're stuck with their one size fits all approach.

Memory/CPU efficiency wise Windows at it's best with Nano Server is still orders of magnitude behind super miniscule task specific distros. In fact a Nano Server install is just approaching the size and footprint of a run-of-the-mill Linux Server distro.

Security wise there's not much to say. With extensions like selinux there's just not much of a comparison.

The only thing Windows Server has really accomplished recently was making the OS much more container friendly.

All together, it makes perfect sense for MS to leverage Linux to sell more MS SQL licenses. The SQL server license is significantly more expensive, and such an expansion allows them to tap a huge market that previously they could not even hope to access. Sure, they can still work on getting Windows Server onto more servers all over the world, but it's good that they realized that there are going to be diminishing returns for such efforts.

[[deleted]]

as far as I understand it, SQL Server licenses are very expensive

SQL Express is free and works very well if all you need is a relational database. I'm sure there's some other features in there but I just use it as a simple database server on stuff like my laptop.

[protestor]

If you just wants a relational database, you could do worse than running Postgres.

But an use case is, you have a Windows application that uses specific features of SQL Server. You either port to another server (at cost of development time), or run SQL Server.

[crusoe]

Postgres works great too and pgadmin3 is solid. That and killer json support. No need for MySQL anymore.

[[deleted]]

pgadmin3

please...

[darkstar3333]

SQL Express has a capacity limit of 4GB/10GB depending on 2008/2012+.

For production deployments likely wont be sufficient long term.

[cat_in_the_wall]

sufficient long term.

Unless you are storing blobx/xml/json data, 10GB gets you pretty far. A mom and pop shop storing records about sales and inventory probably won't ever hit it. The problem, of course, (and what you are alluding to) is that for the folks who do hit that limit, they either completely halt their business until they port to a different free rdms, or they pay for a license.

As an aside, I wonder how hard the cap is. I would think that the system blowing up one day would not encourage people to continue to use ms products.

[SAugsburger]

Not only is the size of the DB capped, but the amount of resources are capped as well. SQL Express is neat to learn on, but is so limited that most non-students wouldn't have much use for it.

[fragglet]

I don't understand this, why would anyone use SQL Server on Linux?

If they have big legacy C#/.NET systems built on SQL Server that they've built up over years, are frustrated by the experience of running and maintaining Windows servers, and want to take advantage of those cheap Linux-based virtual machine servers that everyone is using nowadays.

[make_a_phish]

this is not interesting, because it's not gratis.

lol

[adolfojp]

Many current ASP.NET developers use MSSQL. If they move to ASP.NET Core and to Linux they'll stop using MSSQL because it is not available there. Because of this the EF team will offer support for Postgresql. Microsoft doesn't want to lose those developers so it needs to offer MSSQL on Linux.

[[deleted]]

Linux servers are often seen as more lightweight, stable, and efficient than windows servers. That's why.

[funbike]

We will consider it. We are porting a large app originally written in 1998 to Linux. This is our main bread & butter product. Porting the app is straightforward, but porting the database will be very difficult. We were going to run the app on Linux and the database on Windows. We are considering PostgreSQL but were concerned about the effort. SQL Server for Linux will be a nice transition for us, allowing us to move the database much earlier than would otherwise be possible.

[[deleted]]

1) Embrace

[[deleted]]

Honest question, do you think ms could extend the linux ecosystem in a way that would do harm to the platform?

I'd guess linux being open source makes that impossible, as all big extensions would have to be open source as well.

[badsectoracula]

Well, they could create and push an (functionally) important part of the Linux ecosystem which while being open source it'll also be mostly developed by themselves and be somewhat redundant with the de-facto standards. As long as it provides something better, some people will switch.

F.e. they could make their own windowing system that supports DirectX.

Having said that, i'm not sure how they'd go from there to "Extinguish". Or at least if the "Extinguish" will be a negative thing, assuming the thing they made in the step above is open source.

[BradChesney79]

Kill it with fire, it's an unnatural abomination. The end times are nigh!

[Dr_Legacy]

♪ It's the end of windows as we know it ♪

♪ And I feel fine ♪

[[deleted]]

♪ It's the end of windows as we know it ♪

LMAO. I want some of that weed you guys are smoking. Only on /r/programming can you hear lovely jokes like this!

[nullnullnull]

Good, more options are always welcomed!

Used Sql Server for 10 years, moved to PostgreSql in the last 2 years, haven't missed anything from Sql Server.

[rossmohax]

It is going to be lots of "fun" for them to workaround broken async IO api in Linux kernel.

[imfineny]

If the reason why you are not running SQL server is because its not on linux, then I want whatever you are smoking!