Solid IT, a technology consulting firm that specializes in database technology, has awarded Microsoft’s SQL server its database management software (DBMS) of the year award for 2016.
Although Oracle maintained its lead in the overall DBMS market, followed by MySQL, Microsoft placed third after jumping nearly 77 points for a total score of 1221 in the company’s DB-Engines Rankings. By comparison, second-place MySQL gained 67 points (1366 total points) and Oracle shed 79 points (1417 total points).
Solid IT credits Microsoft’s strong showing on the official release of SQL Server 2016 in June and the company’s embrace of a popular open-source operating system (OS). Earlier this year, Microsoft caused a stir when the software giant announced that was planning to port SQL Server to Linux.
Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise division, said the move would “enable SQL Server to deliver a consistent data platform across Windows Server and Linux, as well as on-premises and cloud,” in a March 7 announcement. The company plans to release SQL Server for Linux by mid-2017.
A public preview of the database software is currently available to early testers. In addition to Linux, Microsoft released previews for SQL Server for Docker Engine and macOS using Docker for Mac.
Solid IT co-founders Paul Andlinger and Matthias Gelbmann said in a blog post that SQL Server was popular in the LinkedIn profiles and job offers categories used to tabulate scores. They also observed at Microsoft’s DBMS also performed well in StackOverflow discussions, Google Trends and search engine results.
Rohan Kumar, general manager of Microsoft’s Database Systems Group, noted his company is also focused on engaging with the developer community.
“To bring the latest innovation in SQL Server to more of the developer community, we also released an updated portfolio of connectivity drivers across languages and runtimes as well as a SQL Server extension for the cross-platform development tool Visual Studio Code,” said Kumar in a statement. “We look forward to working with developers even more in 2017.”
MySQL, also owned by Oracle, was named the runner-up for having narrowed the gap between itself and its corporate parent. Andlinger and Gelbmann praised Oracle for dispelling fears that MySQL’s development may fall by the wayside after acquiring the open source database in 2010 by releasing competitive offerings under the MySQL banner.
Third place for DBMS of the year went to PostgresSQL. Despite placing fifth in the rankings after MongoDB, PostgresSQL’s score jumped nearly 48 points compared MongoDB’s 26-point jump.
“In 2016 PostgreSQL released two new versions (9.5 and 9.6) which introduced a new UPSERT capability, row level security, new Big Data features and improvements to both scale up and scale out high performance workloads,” Andlinger and Gelbmann wrote.
Microsoft’s SQL Server was also named one of ServerWatch’s top ten enterprise database systems of 2016. The sister-site’s rankings also include Oracle, SAP Sybase ASE, MariaDB Enterprise and IBM DB2. Informix, another database solution from IBM, made the cut as did Ingres, PostgreSQL parent open-source project.