Buying a Vehicle vs. Buying a Database Platform

I’d like to share a story about buying a new vehicle that happened to me recently and relate it to choosing to buy a database platform. I decided after 10 years with my current vehicle that it was time to trade up and get something that would both make sense for my family but also would be a nice treat.

I walked into the dealership and the make/model is not important so we’ll refer to this vehicle as the “Dream SUV”. This was a very exciting time for me as I’ve always wanted a “Dream SUV” and because this was going to be a once in a lifetime purchase I wanted all the bells and whistles.

This is how my conversation went:

Me: I’d like to purchase the 2011 Dream SUV please

Vendor: Fantastic… wise decision… this is the vehicle for you. What edition of the vehicle are you looking for?

Me: Top of the line… I need it all, give me the 2011 Dream SUV Enterprise Edition.

Vendor: (with dollar signs in his eyes) well done sir… the price for that particular vehicle is $80,000

Me: Great… when I was looking into this vehicle that is what the advertised price was, let’s do up the paperwork.

Vendor: Would you like the following options? Spare Tire? Leather seats? GPS? Heated power seats? 6 speaker surround sound system? Bi-Xenon Headlamps? Etc? etc? etc?

Me: Yes… this is the “Enterprise Edition” don’t these features come with your top of the line model?

Vendor: You bet, we can add them on…

Me: huh?

Vendor: When we add together all the features with everything you want your new total is $135,000

Me: (Walks out with mixed feelings of confusion, disappointment, and being mislead)

Now let’s compare this experience to deciding on a database platform. The following table shows the comparison of how advanced features based on SQL Server Enterprise Edition are packaged from the each vendor:

Features	SQL Server	IBM DB2	Oracle DB
High Availability
Advanced Security
Data Warehousing
Advanced Compression
Manageability
Non-relational
Advanced Business Intelligence
Master Data Management
Complex Event Processing

Notice anything different?

With SQL Server Enterprise Edition all of the features you would be looking for in an Enterprise product are included in the Enterprise Edition. There are no “extra” costs for features and functionality that you would just assume/hope come with buying the best edition of a product available.

For more information please review the SQL Server Gives You More Advanced Features (Out-of-the-Box) whitepaper.

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Colin Stasiuk (MCP, MCTS SQL 2005/2008, MCITP DBDEV, and MCITP DBA) is an accomplished Microsoft SQL Server DBA who has been working with SQL Server since 1996. He is the founder of Benchmark IT Consulting and his specialties include SQL Server Administration, Performance Tuning, Security, Best Practice / Standards, Upgrades, and Consolidation. Colin is a proud PASS member, President of EDMPASS (The Edmonton Chapter of PASS), and has recently co-authored a book on SQL Server 2008 Policy Based Management.

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