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As we work with other Professionals in our industry, we quickly learn that there are many ways to accomplish a given task. When presented with multiple options in a situation, there are times where one option stands out as the optimal choice based upon our general knowledge of the database engine.

There are also times where the optimal choice may not be so obvious and will vary depending on many considerations such as database architecture, level of use, indexing, hardware configuration or general best practices. Any given approach may perform superbly with one database and drag on another.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 is the latest release of SQL Server. This article will introduce the top 10 features and benefits of SQL Server 2008 R2. The “R2” tag indicates this is an intermediate release of SQL Server and not a major revision. However, there are a number of interesting new features for both DBAs and developers alike. At the time of this article, R2 is available as a CTP (Community Technology Preview). In addition to new features, there are two new editions as well, SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter and SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse.

Problem

Is Microsoft SQL Server superior to MySQL or not? What are the pros and cons of using SQL Server over MySQL? Is MySQL mature enough to compete with a big player like Microsoft and Oracle? Can we fairly compare both products?

Solution

In my modest opinion there is not a simple answer to this question, because we are not comparing apples to apples. Microsoft SQL Server is a feature rich database compared to MySQL however; MySQL's goal is not to keep up with MSSQL or Oracle instead; MySQL’s priorities are: reliability, performance, and ease of use.

So, in my opinion, the answer to the question “Is SQL Server superior to MySQL or not” is: it depends. It depends on the kind of application, environment and budget we have to work with.