A True SQL OS

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A True SQL OS

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Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736255 More actions · Answer 1

I'd argue, Jeff, we can do both.

Tune us an OS server on a core installation, and also improve the language. I bet some of your items might be voted up if you submit them on Connect. A few of those could be CLR types, like the HierarchyID that would be very handy.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004356 More actions · Answer 2

Steve Jones - Editor (8/29/2009)
I'd argue, Jeff, we can do both.
Tune us an OS server on a core installation, and also improve the language. I bet some of your items might be voted up if you submit them on Connect. A few of those could be CLR types, like the HierarchyID that would be very handy.

Heh... I agee... Like Yogi Berra used to say, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." 😀 Doing both would be good. But, doing the OS without the T-SQL would be a mistake in my book.

Guess I'm going to have to start writing some of these things up in Connect.

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736255 More actions · Answer 3

And post them here, call for votes. Those votes matter to the dev team.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004356 More actions · Answer 4

Great idea... thanks Steve.

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Aaron N. Cutshall SSCrazy Eights Points: 9011 More actions · Answer 5

I agree that both the SQL OS and the T-SQL enhancements should be done. In fact, it seems logical to me that by paring down the OS side, much of the functionality of the file system should then slide to the T-SQL side. I also agree that many aspects in T-SQL should be parameterized as Jeff mentioned to simplify code and reduce the need for dynamic SQL. To me, dynamic SQL ranks right up there with cursors as something to avoid if at all humanly possible.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sqlrv
Website: https://www.sqlrv.com

IceDread SSCertifiable Points: 5050 More actions · Answer 6

It is as said an interesting idea but I dont see the value of it because sql server is still very lacking. If it were to become a bit better, less bugs and better options, then maybe a sql server os could be interesting. But if one of the mayor reasons for this were file manipulation as listed in the article Steve then I feel ms instead need to work on their product, not change it into something it's not and something it's not ready for.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736255 More actions · Answer 7

I have heard a few times that SQL Serer is really lacking. Yet is sells amazingly well and has met almost every need that I've ever had. Can it be improved? Sure, so can Oracle, DB2, etc. But that doesn't mean it's "very lacking"

Perhaps in some specific workloads, but overall it's an extremely capable product that works very well for most people.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004356 More actions · Answer 8

IceDread (8/30/2009)
It is as said an interesting idea but I dont see the value of it because sql server is still very lacking.

Can you give some specific examples of what you mean by "sql server is still very lacking"?

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

IceDread SSCertifiable Points: 5050 More actions · Answer 9

Jeff Moden (8/30/2009)
IceDread (8/30/2009)
It is as said an interesting idea but I dont see the value of it because sql server is still very lacking.
Can you give some specific examples of what you mean by "sql server is still very lacking"?

I saw you list quite a few things. But I believe they must make sql management studio unable to crash as a first step. It's not often that it happens but as long as it do that sometimes, I prefer to not have it as my OS.

GSquared SSC Guru Points: 260824 More actions · Answer 10

IceDread (8/30/2009)
Jeff Moden (8/30/2009)
IceDread (8/30/2009)
It is as said an interesting idea but I dont see the value of it because sql server is still very lacking.
Can you give some specific examples of what you mean by "sql server is still very lacking"?
I saw you list quite a few things. But I believe they must make sql management studio unable to crash as a first step. It's not often that it happens but as long as it do that sometimes, I prefer to not have it as my OS.

I don't think I've ever had Management Studio crash, but uncrashable software is as impossible as an uncrashable car. No matter what they do to make it more stable, someone will find a way to "text while DBAing".

- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread

"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon

GSquared SSC Guru Points: 260824 More actions · Answer 11

Jeff Moden (8/29/2009)
That might be nice but I'd rather see them spend the time on improvements to SQL Server itself. For example... some better IO functions for T-SQL. Why is it that we have to use xp_CmdShell to write to a text file? Why isn't there a BULK EXPORT to go along with BULK INSERT? Why is BULK INSERT so flakely in that it counts delimiters instead of EOR's when it comes to skipping rows? Why is it that you need to train BULK INSERT with a format file to do a simple "true" CSV import with text qualifiers? Why is it that aggregate functions such a SUM still don't work the way they're supposed to? Why is it that we still have to build Tally Table splitters to split parameters and the like instead of there being a nice machine language level function to call to do such a thing? Why is it that we still use ROW_NUMBER() to build a list of dates instead of there being a ROW_DATE() function? Why is it that we still use the Tally table to build a list of dates/times to do an Outer Join to instead of their being a GenDate(start, end, increment) function that returns a table? Why is it that we still have to write Cursors and While Loops with dynamic SQL or concatenated SQL to do something across multiple tables or databases instead of simply being able to use variables in the FROM clause or in a USE statement? Why is it that we have to resort to trickery such as the undocumented xp_DirTree just to get a simple list of files? And lord help us if we actually wanted to get the date of creation and file size. There should be a full blown DIR function that returns a full directory structure complete with levels and everything else we need. Don't say no one would use it, either. I've answered a huge number of posts that say otherwise.
I'd suggest that an SQL OS is the least of our worries at this point. The 8 cylinder car is currently only firing on 6. Even if the underlying road were as flat and smooth as a pancake and downhill all the time, we're not getting good mileage. In fact, they keep removing cylinders through deprecation.
Forget the OS... make T-SQL better, instead. And I'm not talking about improving all these idiotic GUI's like SSIS that, judging from the number of posts on them, really haven't made life simpler.

I agree with a bunch of this.

Some of it is supposed to be answered by CLR functions, but standardized solutions would be better.

As for SSIS, I personally find it a VAST improvement over DTS, and used it to more than double workload capacity of a critical department at my last job.

- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread

"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004356 More actions · Answer 12

IceDread (8/30/2009)
Jeff Moden (8/30/2009)
IceDread (8/30/2009)
It is as said an interesting idea but I dont see the value of it because sql server is still very lacking.
Can you give some specific examples of what you mean by "sql server is still very lacking"?
I saw you list quite a few things. But I believe they must make sql management studio unable to crash as a first step. It's not often that it happens but as long as it do that sometimes, I prefer to not have it as my OS.

Believe it or not, SSMS has never crashed for me. And I know what I listed but I'd like to know what you'd mean by "still very lacking" because a lot of what I mention isn't in any of the other RDBMSs or, when it is (MySQL has a numbers generator), it sucks so bad it has it's own gravitational field. 🙂

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736255 More actions · Answer 13

I don't think I've ever had SSMS crash on me either. If that's your biggest complaint, I'd suggest you look into tracing it down. YOu might have something as simple as a corrupt DLL that you occasionally load.

IceDread SSCertifiable Points: 5050 More actions · Answer 14

It has not happened often and it seams to happen if you do something like open a window in management studio to say look at the fragementation of a table and then that window hangs itself while trying to get the data I required while I start to do something else, perhaps close the window because I realised after a few seconds I can have a look at the fragmentation at another time. And yeah, maybe I'm old fashioned but I dont like software to crash, especially not if I were to look at it as a possible operating system.

I see really no benefit of having sql server as a OS. If you were to use it as an OS, how would the files be structured, where would all files be saved, in sql server? What if something went wrong with a patch or something then? If it goes wrong with windows, it's still a ntfs file stystem you can access with a startup cd or moving the drive unless it's on a san in which case it's still a file system you can access.

I only see the complexity increasing by making sql server an OS of it's own. New ways to handle security would have to be implemented.

You ask which issues I have. Well getting data out or in with files from a 64bit system to a 32bit system and vice versa, to tell the truth, I find the wizard in management studio to be the fastest tool to do these things when it's a one time deal. Not writing the code because last time I did I ran into trouble with it and the filesystems, tell me, do you find this easy? What other things I'd like to see made better is xml support in sql server. How to get the data from sql server to xml, I seam to recall me doing a few of these things a year ago and to tweak it and form it the way you want it didnt exactly go that fast. After that I'd like to see better support for say joining with stored procedures. Reseed is still bugged btw, that is a main function in sql server I would say, and having a bug with setting the identity aint a nice thing. These are some of my main concerns which I believe you were after since if you wanted to know all bugs there are you'd be searching.

I see no value in limiting an sql server to it's own OS. I only see how that could make life more troublesome with file systems, security, patches, management and I'd hate to see work be done to make it it's own OS instead of working on making sql server a better product.

Clive Strong SSChampion Points: 11222 More actions · Answer 15

I actually remember reading about a SQL OS now...I was struggling to think where and then it hit me on the train this morning.

Inside SQL Server 2005 by Kalen Delaney - She also refers to the SQL OS.