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Vista Not Compatible With SQL Server
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."
Beg to differ, but the OS has been released to volume customers for about 3 weeks now.
This crap is getting lame. I'm seeing more and more unfounded "articles" on here because they have to make sure they get the stories Digg has. Newsflash folks. 99% of the articles on Digg are fanboy crap. This one is no different.
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.
For those unaware this is primarily a concern for people who develop stand alone applications that currently use SQL Express.
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!