SURVEY RESULTS: Real-Time Value: SQL Server’s Growing Role In Enterprise Data Management

Publication Date: November 2007

Author: Unisphere Research

Abstract: "Real-Time Value: SQL Server’s Growing Role In Enterprise Data Management" presents the results of a survey of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS), the leading association of SQL Server technology and database professionals, conducted in October 2007. The survey and this report were produced by Unisphere Research (publishers of Database Trends and Applications), and sponsored by GoldenGate Software.

Respondents represent a profile of advanced SQL Server sites. An average of nine out of 10 of the companies covered in this survey run instances of SQL Server 2005, and another 43 percent said they would move to instances of the next version of SQL Server, SQL Server 2008 (code-named “Katmai”), at least within a year of its first release. More than a quarter (26 percent) reported running 60 or more instances of SQL Server across their enterprises, a percentage that grows to 46 percent for more than 20 instances.

Many respondents were enthusiastic about the enterprise features found in the database’s latest incarnation. “SQL Server 2005 has proven itself to be sufficient to begin retiring Oracle systems,” commented one respondent, a database administrator with a service-sector company. “SQL Server 2008 looks to be even better, especially in the data warehousing area. We are actively pursuing replacing older Oracle systems with SQL Server.”

Key findings in this 18-page report include:

- A majority of organizations rely on SQL Server for data-intensive applications, such as reporting, business intelligence, data warehouses, and financial applications. However, most need to extract data from multiple brands of databases at the back end.

- More than one out of five SQL Server sites provide real-time data for reporting. However, those relying on other databases on the back end still have data latency of at least 24 hours. In most cases, this transfer occurs in daily batch mode, meaning it takes up to 24 hours for requested data to become available to users.

- A majority of respondents rely on SQL Server data warehouses for enterprise data reporting. Microsoft’s latest SQL Server 2005-based toolset also is employed by most companies to integrate back-end data sources.

- More than a third of organizations have moved applications and data off other database platforms and into SQL Server over the past year. However, relatively few have moved already existing data-intensive systems, such as data warehouses, directly onto SQL Server.
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