This editorial was originally published on July 6, 2015. It is being re-run as Steve is out of the office.

I ran across this comparison of SQL Server to PostgreSQL. It's written from the point of view of a PostgreSQL developer, who certainly doesn't like the Microsoft product much, with no shortage of complaints. Whether you agree or not, I do think there are a few valid points.

However one of the quotes that really caught my attention was in the section on converting dates. The author says that "MSDN provides a table of these magic numbers.", referring to the arcane and completely unintuitive format codes that we use with CONVERT(). Fortunately FORMAT() was introduced in 2012, and simplifies things, but still has issues and limitations.

Certainly all systems and languages will have some codes and parameters that don't make sense, left over from earlier times for backwards compatibility. However the more I look at T-SQL and SQL Server, the more I do find it silly that many of the small conveniences haven't evolved across the versions. The bcp utility is outdated, functions haven't been updated to work with more than 8,000 characters, SSIS has issues with CSV files, and more.

It does seem at times that when I'm answering questions on the Internet that the answers I give, while logical and familiar to me, seem magic to others. This might be especially true when talking about transaction logs, which still seem far to difficult for many people to grasp.

I enjoy working with SQL Server and look forward to a long career in the future developing software on the platform, however I do worry about some of the long term health of the platform for new users. It seems that the usability advantages of SQL Server have dramatically narrowed in recent years, and in some ways the other platforms have implemented features that SQL Server is sorely lacking.

Hopefully Microsoft will focus on reducing the friction of manipulating data in SQL Server. Not that SQL Server will go away, but I can see companies migrating to other platforms if it becomes substantially easier and cheaper to manipulate data.