Microsoft SQL Server Vs MySQL

A collegaue of mine – a VB developer – sent me a link to this page on the Microsoft website which attempts to comapre MySQL to their own SQL Server by drawing some.. shall we say creative comparisons.

By no means is the article completely factually inaccurately. There are many valid points which no one would argue with and SQL Server does offer many advantages over MySQL in many of the areas they have highlighted.

But thrown in amongst the facts are some pretty wild innacuracies. Mostly of the usual “let’s confuse people that don’t really understand how open source software works” variety. Let’s have a look:

MySQL currently has approximately 70 developers and 50 support staff members

They say this like 70 is not a large number of developers, then don’t offer an insight into how many developers they have working full time on SQL Server. I wonder why?

Unproven performance and limited scalability

Google use MySQL. If that’s not proof of performance and scalability then I don’t know what is.

MySQL has many security challenges (which means you may, too)

Windows Media player has “many security challenges”. Yes MySQL has “security challenges” but name me one piece of software (especially from the boys at Redmond) that doesn’t.

MySQL is free—until you need support, advice, alerts, and regularly scheduled updates

Maybe I’m missing the point but I don’t see this as a negative. It’s free. If you need support you can pay for it. On the other hand Microsoft SQL Server is a commercial product which you must pay for from the outset. It’s like comparing a badger to a chocolate cake and saying the cake is better cause it tastes more like chocolate.

In fact I believe I have hit the nail squarely on the head.

Comparing MySQL to SQL Server is like comparing a badger to a chocolate cake and saying the cake is better cause it tastes more like chocolate.

and you can quote me on that.