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Difference between SQL Server and SQL Database?

  • July 2, 2019 at 11:10 pm

    #3659583

    SQL Server is a physical computer right?  Whereas SQL Database is software that runs on SQL Server right?

     

    From the Microsoft website, we have this:

    "SQL Server and SQL Database support logins based on Windows authentication and logins based on SQL Server authentication"

    This sounds like they are essentially the same thing.

     

     

     

  • July 3, 2019 at 1:58 am

    #3659608

    Well, being lazy and not digging out the page from MS you referenced, I'm going to make some presumptions.

    SQL Server is the software that hosts the SQL database(s.)  SQL Server requires that it be installed on a server (physical or virtual) running a supported OS (Windows Server 20xx, Windows various desktop versions, or for SQL2017+ Linux)

    I would suspect the description of the logins might be referencing both a "normal" SQL Server / database and Contained Databases.  Normally the SQL Server side handles authenticating logins (well, mostly, Windows authentication gets passed on to the OS,) while a Contained Database handles it's own authentication of logins.

    Clear as mud?

  • July 3, 2019 at 11:30 am

    #3659696

    Azure SQL Database is a platform as a service offering. You get a database. Under the covers, it's just SQL Server (a special version of SQL Server) running on Microsoft's hardware. It has near parity with most database behaviors as you'd get from a database that you run in SQL Server (which doesn't have to be on hardware, it can run in virtual machines and in containers). It's the same, but different.

    "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
    - Theodore Roosevelt

    Author of:
    SQL Server Execution Plans
    SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

  • July 3, 2019 at 12:05 pm

    #3659704

    Grant Fritchey wrote:

    Azure SQL Database is a platform as a service offering.

    I always seem to forget Azure...

  • July 3, 2019 at 4:25 pm

    #3659862

    SQL Server is Microsoft's implementation of a Relational Database Management System - just like Oracle, Sybase, DB2, PostreSQL etc.  A database is usually defined as a collection of data.

    But that wording in the article you referenced is weird. They may have just been trying to say that at the server level (logins) and database level (users), you can use Windows accounts or SQL accounts. It's not worded too well.

    Sue

  • July 3, 2019 at 11:52 pm

    #3659953

    Great.  Thank yoou.

  • July 3, 2019 at 11:53 pm

    #3659954

    Thank you.  This helps.  I'm new into this stuff.

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