# Microsoft SQL Server 73 Hacker News commenters recommended Microsoft SQL Server and 59 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 20 years (6 owners). **Verdict:** Recommended as a batteries-included, hands-off database with strong tooling, documentation and a free Express edition. Main caveat is per-core licensing cost. ## Why people recommend it - Strong GUI and IDE tooling (3 comments): "SQL Server's claim to fame was GUI admin tools making life easier for many who bore DBA responsibilities only in anger." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47590753)) "Good databases like Oracle and SQL Server have great IDEs for stored procedures development." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48421849)) "I found Oracle to just be a lot more unwieldy from a tooling perspective than SQL Server" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46737148)) - Good documentation and query hints (3 comments): "even their documentation is absolutely stellar. You just read how the protocol works from the PDF and implement it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47593085)) "it also has a hint to guide or disable sniffing because many times a generic plan is actually better" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46697789)) "if it did not have plan hinting it would have been catastrophic for our customers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46913034)) - Easy, batteries-included, hands-off operation (2 comments): "SQL Server, which is still the easiest, most batteries-included and hands-off database to this day." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49953754)) "still the easiest, most batteries-included and hands-off database to this day" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49951525)) - Trusted for serious, critical workloads (2 comments): "I'd pick MSSQL if I was being compensated based upon the accuracy, performance, durability and availability of the system." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46906461)) "if it's serious business and we cant drop anything on the floor I am reaching for MSSQL without even blinking" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46722669)) ## What people warn about - Per-core licensing cost is high (3 comments): "I could never justify that license cost, and how it restricts how you design your infrastructure due to the cost and license terms." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46731863)) "SQL Server was pretty good until they went the Oracle way with their licensing shenanigans" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47592574)) "they've been increasing the per-core licensing fees while simultaneously hardware core counts have been increasing exponentially" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46724854)) - Deadlocks, timeouts and crashes under load (4 comments): "MSSQL + VS + tested Server + tested Client on 16GB + Win11 will just choke MSSQL server into constant timeouts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49191198)) "SQLServer would deadlock between connections when all they were doing was executing the exact same statement" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47043220)) "the MERGE statement is basically a bug minefield, I wouldn't use it unless I wanted to deadlock myself" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48737702)) - Late Unicode support in default collation (2 comments): "MS could and should have seen it by then instead of waiting until 2019 to add utf8 collations to its database" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47287215)) "The default collation on MS SQL Server didn’t support Unicode until some fairly recent releases." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50121508)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [PostgreSQL](https://hackerapproved.com/p/postgresql.md): 816 recommend - [MySQL](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mysql.md): 124 recommend - [Microsoft Access](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-access.md): 62 recommend - [Turso](https://hackerapproved.com/p/turso.md): 53 recommend - [MariaDB](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mariadb.md): 40 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Microsoft SQL Server", https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-sql-server/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).