MS SQL as an ERP database platform?

The common opinion of who?
- Oracle DBA's - bah, that piece of crap
- MS SQL DBA's - It's grrreat!

If you know OS's, it's very similar to the differences between say UNIX/LINUX and XP. If you like tweaking things to the nth degree, then you would probably pick UNIX/LINUX. If you don't want to be bothered with all the admin crap and getting your work done is more important, then XP is your baby.

The same can be said with ORACLE and MSSQL.

Personally, i prefer MSSQL. It is definately a platform to consider. The average daily performance difference between it and other DB's are small. It also depends on how big your DB will grow. It scales fairly well and although Oracle DBA's will not like it, it's fairly hands off and adept at self governance (job security threat). It was designed for minimal interference.
As far as normalization is concerned, that truely depends on how well your application sitting on top of MSSQL was designed. Table normalization is typically accomplished during the development of the software.

I think your concern is valid, although a little misplaced. Normalization is not a function of SQL Server, but is implemented by the designer of the database. SQL Server has the toolsets and features to support properly designed, normalized databases. Performance problems occur when tables and relationships are poorly designed. Our MS SQL Server database for ERP is 120GB. We have the best hardware availble to run this system but have many performance problems due to poor design. The ERP database is a carryover from an older system so it looks like many flat files with no SQL defined relationships. Example, code is used to read, loop through tables, and delete rows from child tables prior to deleting a parent row from a master table, instead of using a cascading delete.

Well today most system satisfy CODDs rules as proper database. An SQL Server 2000 may be almost competitive to Oracle or AS400 depending on the OS, Applications developed on it, normalization factor, nodes creation factor etc. But you can consider more factors like
1) SQL server is now inbuilt component of Win server 2003.NET
2) Supports T-SQL, MS English query
3) Continuos innovation and new features added
4) Yukon supporting Reports server, 64 bit platform
5) Hostable
6) Easy to hire a new DBA at competitive salary in future to support and develop

There is one important thing other DBA's claim. SECURITY???
Truely security lies in the way the snake is handled. Learn to be a charmer. Security problems are coming because of its popularity. Take a fair survey on factors below
1) Number of implementations
2) Number of security issues
3) Downtime
4) Support
5) Hardware requirement
6) Technical expertise requirement.

Also people claim AS400 and Unix/Linux are real strong things which could never be hacked. Lets not hack it. Take a simplest implementation of AS400 in a typical company. Write a RPG/Cobol which duplicates records in a loop. If you have a null value passed to this record/field, RPG program runs infinitely and goes on creating duplicate records until the entire system memory gets filled up and the server wakes up. Oh something is going wrong. so it goes in a mode of revoking. This creates a journal of millions of records. Result????? So nothing is 100% secure. It is that not many have tried it.

Take your time to learn all possible systems and select the one which is more popular so you get less complex problems to handle. Being one in thousand is better than being one in island.

RV

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