Moving from SQL Server to Vertica

kisangoli78

Hey all,

I have been working as a financial analyst for about 4.5 years using SQL Server and recently moved to a new firm as a Business Intelligence Analyst using HPE Vertica. I have tried to look at several comparisons online of the differences between the two, but I was hoping to get the community's feedback. In your opinion, what are the major things I should know about how Vertica operates as compared to SQL Server?

Thanks!

marcothesane

Of course that's because I delivered it - but the feedback was sufficiently good.
Sign up to https://academy.vertica.com , then navigate to the recorded session of the 2020 summer Academy, day 1, one of the first presentations: "Vertica for People of Different Faith". It is directed at the very kind of people you seem to be one of: People experienced in SQL from other (popular) databases. As a summary: Differences in data types, the fact that Vertica is a big data database, with less functionality (at least as of now) that you would expect in an OLTP platform like SQL Server: Triggers, cursor-based loops in stored procedures, but also very quick rollbacks of failed mass transactions (as opposed to SQL Server) ; Variables not kept in the database, but on the client side; differences in integer division; more than double the number of available functions in Vertica than in SQL Server.

mosheg

In addition, the following is obvious in Vertica, but one may ask if SQL server..
Provides a single license with all the built-in functions on the cloud?
MapReduce?
Is it based on pure columnar storage technology?
Supports aggressive Data compression?
Offers built in High Availability (with no need for full failover cluster nor mirroring)?
Good fit for large scale data warehouse applications?
Deploy anywhere and on any cloud?
Include Open source innovations (e.g. https://github.com/vertica/VerticaPy)?
Exactly the same product capabilities across on-premises and cloud offerings?
Open approach to avoid vendor lock-in?
Nested transactions permitted?
Good performance on queries with high concurrent load?
Same s/w bits allow different deployment options? E.g. separation between compute and storage, shared nothing and shared everything?
Same s/w bits can be used anywhere (e.g. on prem, on any cloud, VM, free community addition etc.)?
Free for dev & test, with no data size limitations or hidden costs?
Need not to install any additional packages for geospatial analytics, advanced analytics, in-DB machine learning, and time series analytics?
Supports very fast federal joins with any DB?
Same bits for 4GB RAM VM on your laptop will power multi PB database on a powerful cluster?
Guess the best fields data-type and encoding for schema less data one wants to instantly load?
Serves as a very powerful query engine on external files (on HDFS or elsewhere) and at the same time as multifunction DB engine?
Provides clear documentation one can find, read and understand quickly without tons of long testimonials?
Provides ALL features & services on Linux?
The list goes on..