Published January 21st, 2003 by Jim O'Halloran
My “Killer App” for Linux
While I’m writing about Windows on top of Linux, etc… Here’s what would be the “killer app” for Linux in our organisation:
Microsoft SQL Server
I know, I know… There are Open Source databases, which might be just as good or better than SQL Server, but right here and now, I can’t use them.
At work, we supply Point of Sale applications for a wide variety of clients. Our clients range from standalone PC’s right up to 30 user networks (small I know). Microsoft’s SQL Server gives us a solution which we can install free of charge without a dedicated server for up to 5 users, and we can buy the Small Business Server bundle and run a dedicated server from 5 users on upwards.
With a single code base, we can run on all configurations. With the exception of SQL Server we can replace everything we use in the SBS bundle with a linux equivelent. File and print services, with Samba, Exchange with Sendmail and IMAP, MS Proxy with Squid and IPTables NAT.
Sure, I can change our app to use the PostgreSQL ODBC driver (although an OLEDB driver would be better), but then I need to support and test both MS SQL Server and PostgreSQL. But we’re a small company, and the coding and testing involved in making that change prohibits us from doing it.
If MS drilivered SQL Server for Linux today, we’d be able to ditch a lot of Windows servers tomorrow. That would make me very happy!
Harlan McCanne Says
Take a look at Sybase 11.0.3…
Sybase was kind enough to release a distribution that’s FREE FOR PRODUCTION use on Linux. Since MS SQL was based on it, the code matches pretty closely. Depending on what you’ve done, you may be able to make the switch quite easily.
It’s lacking some management tools that MS SQL Server has, and requires a little more maintenance and RTM time, but otherwise works like a champ.
Furthermore, full licenses of newer versions wouldn’t be prohibitively expensive for you. An internet accessible license is a whole other story, though…
–harlan
Feb 12th, 2003 at 8:03 am