Vista Not Compatible With SQL Server 263
kiran_n sent in an article by Fortune's Owen Thomas on Vista not being compatible with SQL Server. An excerpt:
"But now Microsoft has a problem. Vista, its long-awaited update to the Windows operating system, can't run the current version of SQL Server. The company is working on a SQL upgrade that is compatible with Vista — called SQL Server 2005 Express Service Pack 2 — but it's in beta and can be licensed only for testing purposes. Microsoft hasn't set a release date for the new SQL program."
I can't help but wonder... (Score:1, Insightful)
If anybody... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other breaking news, Oracle does not work with Red Hat Enterprise Linux V.5.
Other Software (Score:5, Insightful)
Backwards compatibility (Score:2, Insightful)
This is expected (Score:4, Insightful)
Think of it: Did anyone of you expect the current version of SQL Server to simply play nice with the "new and improved" Microsoft Vista OS, with all enhancements, bell and whistles? Heck, these "enhancements" took more than 5 years to implement! Way more time than was planned. Give me a break!
FUD at its best (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, Vista is NOT RELEASED YET. Despite that, early adopters can download SQL Server Express SP1, which runs fine on Vista, although it is not technically "supported" by Microsoft. In fact, almost all of the issues are easily worked around by running the setup as admin, and SQL Server Management Studio as admin.
For those people who have additional problems, there is plenty of good documentation [msdn.com] on how to get it running, or they can install the beta of SP2, which should be RTM by the time Vista hits the shelves in the end of Jan anyway.
So despite the author's obvious attempts at a sensational title that would get him lots of hits (and, evidentially, posted on Slashdot), his content is almost pure FUD... and pure gold for Slashdot.
Re:If anybody... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I can't help but wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lame (Score:5, Insightful)
What's funny is there are already numerous comments here, but apparently NONE of those judging and commenting have actually tried what the article seems to be talking about. MSSQL Server 2000 and 2005 run *just fine* under Vista. There may be some minor compatibility problems and yes, the installer warns of these, but you can click right through that. Maybe some issues crop up if you tried to use it as a full fledged server solution as is, but for development purposed they work *just fine*.
Plus, this article is talking about MSSQL Server 2005 Express, which is the local, chopped up locked down version. The rest of the versions work just fine, plus there will be, soon enough, updates to increase the compatibility.
Please keep this kind of crap off Slashdot. It's fine to love OS and hate MS. But at least get your facts *sort of* straight. This is just way off the mark.
Re:I can't help but wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd agree except that most boxen now use some sort of GUI for the admins, though the older and more experienced admins still live in command shells and scripting (automation!)
But the question of what constitutes a "server" is normally a question of hardware capacity, not artificial restrictions imposed by multi-layer bundling. The prices for AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Oracle, Sybase, etc. (i.e. both OS and core services) are based on CPU capacity, number of users, and other metrics that have nothing to do with some vague concept of server vs. client. (Plus X-11 and related display technologies reverse the terms anyhow, so they really have no meaning. I prefer digraphs -- data/command comes from here and goes there.)
The add-on modules for most operating systems and products are feature add-ons -- GIS data type package, enhanced application integration/administration packages, developer/compiler package, etc. The only operating system I know of that clips out all the shell scripting, scheduling services, and other components needed to do real work is Windows.
There are no "desktop" or "home" editions of Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, VM/MVS, AS400, or other systems because the concept is irrational. You run the same binaries on a two-way HP-UX desktop as on an 8-32 way SMP server. It's just minor configuration variables that change to tune performance; Microsoft is the only one to try to make you pay for those tweaks.
Or you can download a package that will apply the registry changes and make your desktop act like a "server". To me that just highlights the inanity of the marketting distinctions.
SQL Express vs SQL Server (Score:5, Insightful)
Why use SQL express? It's more stable and more flexible than just using ODBC to connect to an Access database file. Plus you can use all other features that you can not use in Access. It's also the defacto standard for Visual Studio 2005 developers so it gets a lot of use now adays in development. It's also far easier to use than installing the clients for Oracle or MySQL and reduces your program's foot print. (1.2MB vs 35 MB)
I actually use this, and when testing Vista didn't run into a single problem with it in it's current state. (It installed and ran fine under Beta 1 and 2 although it warned you that it could be unstable, it seems in RC and RTM they actually added it to the "Can't install" list)
And there's more than one way to connect to a database, SQL express isnt' the primary route, so the article is being VERY presumptious about impact on the industry. It's not writen by someone who knows the difference between SQL server (The server app that runs on Windows Server 2000, 2003 and uses a client program to handle the connections to a server) and the SQLExpress App (For use in stand alone programs and development environments and will not allow connections from any machine other than the host machine)
It's also amazing that the author of the article thought that you wouldn't test seperately on both platforms. He makes it sound like having to test on Xp then on Vista is a bad thing. Honestly, if you arn't testing on both and on Windows 2000, you're not doing your job right.
Is it important? Yes, it sucks to have apps that I was testing under Vista Beta 1, that I can no longer test because of the "no-install" flag. But SP to the rescue!
As for using Oracle vs MS-SQL, which is the bigger point. Well. having to deal with both at work I can tell you, MS-SQL is far easier to maintain and manage and back up. Oracle still has far too many legacy items in 9i and 10 that require "special" treatment. Not to mention that it's error reporting system is pointless 90% of the time, and we have to hand step everything we do to figure out why we're getting an error instead of a single error message that says, "OCA-XXXXX: Column can not hold data" instead of "ORA-XXX: 'DOCNAME' is too long for column." You can imagine what a pain Oracle is when you've got an SQL statement that a page long. I won't even go into how unfriendly Oracle's support is. Half the time you ask them for help the answer is "If you were an Oracle trained admin you'ld know that." How about, "If you put it in the manual, I'd already know that. Or if your people would reply to emails without the snotty tone I'd know that." Ug...
Sorry about the rant, enjoy!
Re:actually far worse (Score:4, Insightful)
For the most part SSIS is a huge improvement over DTS, it is also much more scalable, and now has it's own dedicated runtime. Components for SSIS are also C# components as opposed to com components under DTS. Theoretically if you code is written well, you can reuse parts of it inside a 2005 DB with the CLR enabled.
"Horribly broken" is really a rather exagerated claim. No one's software is perfect.
Also, it's rather rude to call individuals "liars" when you don't have any evidence that that individual is in fact lying.
Re:Lame (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Must have really bad code (Score:3, Insightful)
In contrast, 20 year old UNIX software compiles, runs, and takes full advantage of modern hardware; the APIs have hardly changed because UNIX got them right in the first place. That includes the window system.
Re:FUD at its best (Score:4, Insightful)
/. reaches a new low in FUD (Score:1, Insightful)
I read
For starters as someone previously pointed out. Software is designed to support a platform, platforms aren't designed to support software. Vista is the platform. SQL Server is software. Now that Vista is RTM, the SQL Server team will revisit thier software and release a service pack that enables it to run on the new platform. This isn't rocket science or news or anything earth shattering. It's just the way things are...
As you all know. Software is a stack. When you change the bottom of the stack, sometimes you have to retool upper layers of the stack. I suspect that if a new Linux kernel came out tomorrow the majority of current Linux applications and server products would cease to work without a recompilation and some changes to lower level API calls.
The same thing happened when Windows XP shipped. SQL Server 2000 wouldn't run properly on it. Likewise with Windows Server 2003. This isn't because Microsoft writes bad software. Again, it's because if B depends on A and A changes, B will probably need to change also. The greater the change to A, the lower the chances of B working.
Businesses know this and expect it. I highly doubt that any competent IT department is clamering to get the latest and greatest OS onto the desktop of thier 'customers'. I suspect that competent IT departments are installing the Vista builds into a lab environment. Testing internally developed applications against it as well as testing 'common operating environment' [COE] applications on top of it.
I'm sorry if the author of TFA doesn't undestand how software works and how platforms affect software. I'm sorry if Microsoft finally bit the bullet and sacrificed some initial backwards compat in the out-of-box configuration in exchange for an enhanced security model. I'm shocked that
Re:Other Software (Score:3, Insightful)
While I appreciate your concern, the situation is much more complicated than you present it. First of all, there is no need to spend millions of dollars _immediately_; with a lot of software being cross-platform, and many Windows APIs being implemented in Wine, switching can be done gradually. Secondly, just because the software you have been using cost you millions of dollars, doesn't mean the software you will be using also costs that much. Thirdly, although there are certainly costs to switching, the software you switch too might actually lower your costs (licensing, maintenance, downtime,
``From a personal standpoint, I (like most people) am lazy and don't want to switch operating systems and learn another office suite unless I have to.''
I think that's right on: the software most people are using works well enough for them. Or, alternatively, it was hard enough learning to deal with this software. Why, then, take the effort of investigating alternatives? Especially if others have already done so, and you can ask around, and people will tell you that the alternatives are only for geeks; too hard for the average user, and not up to business tasks. Don't get me wrong: this is a perfectly good attitude. It would be unreasonable to expect everybody to take an interest in software and spend time and effort evaluating all software for themselves. Most people have other interests and better things to do with their time. Laziness is a virtue. Of course, that doesn't mean that people couldn't do much better, software-wise, if they tried.
``Personally, I have spent most of my time convincing companies to switch to web-based development using Java and Hibernate with a focus on abstracting the product from both the Operating System and the Database;''
Do keep in mind, though, that anything that offers to abstract from a platform really is but another platform. Instead of tying your product to Windows and SQL Server (or GNU and MySQL, or what have you), you're tying your product to Java and Hibernate. These come with their own advantages and disadvantages.
Re:I can't help but wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
How about because if you were developing code for me, and I found you testing your code against the production database on a real server, you'd be out the door so fast your head would spin?
(Though TBH I wouldn't give you access to the production database anyhow, but that's by the by.)
Re:I can't help but wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why people have QA servers to test against. I certainly hope, for the sake of your company, you don't just test against your workstation and then place it in production. LOL.
Re:I can't help but wonder... (Score:1, Insightful)