Comment Administrators tend to be a conservative lot, which is bad news for tech vendors such as Microsoft that are seeking to pump their latest and greatest products into enterprises customers via subscriptions.
SQL Server 2019 recently dropped out of mainstream support and is now on borrowed time, with extended support running until its final retirement on January 8, 2030.
Support for its successor, SQL Server 2022, began on November 16, 2022, but according to asset tracking biz Lansweeper, users are giving it a wide berth. The latest data puts SQL Server 2019 comfortably at the top for market share, at 28.9 percent, while SQL Server 2022 languishes at the bottom, behind SQL Server 2008, 2005, and 2008 R2, with a less than 0.1 percent market share.
The question is, why?
Esben Dochy, Senior Technical Evangelist, SecOps, at Lansweeper, told The Register: "Fully transitioning to 2022 has not happened because 2019 still has an extended EOL date of January 2030. So there isn't a real rush to migrate yet."
But that might not be the only factor. Dochy added: "Also, 2022 is significantly more expensive. When looking at features, 2022 new features are primarily cloud-focused, which are only useful if you utilize those cloud features in your environment."
If there's no killer feature that a user absolutely must have, paying more to get cloud and AI features doesn't seem to be lighting many fires under administrators, despite what marketers might fervently hope.
We put the question to Alastair Turner, a technical evangelist at database outfit Percona. Why aren't database servers being upgraded?
Turner said the reasons tend to fall into one of two categories. First, there are the mission-critical applications that can never be offline for any reason. Upgrading is, therefore, highly problematic and likely to be a business risk.
Then there are applications that deal with low-sensitivity data or aren't used much. They'll get flagged for replacement, but aren't important enough to justify the effort. Turner said: "We have seen examples of applications scheduled for decommissioning, where the team never has enough bandwidth to get that work done. So, the app stays in place and keeps on running.
"The former don't get moved because they are too important, and the latter don't get moved because they are ignored. Either way, they don't get migrated."
Turner also pointed to the "if it ain't broke, then don't fix it" mentality, where applications that are meeting a business need are left alone.
"New features in a new version of the database are seldom of interest to the application team, because the application was built around the features available when it was initially developed," he said.
"But sooner or later, updates will be needed, whether it is for security reasons or to fix something that has finally broken. When your application database version is multiple updates behind the rest of your systems, this adds to the workload and increases the challenge."
We contacted Microsoft to get its take on SQL Server 2022's market share and its opinion on why administrators appear to be steering clear for now. As is all too often the case these days, Microsoft has yet to respond.
However, it is not only commercial players like Microsoft that face update reluctance. The same can also apply in the open source world, although to a lesser or greater extent depending on the database server in question.
"PostgreSQL tends to be fairly up to date," Turner said, although he noted that some ancient installations were still ticking over, mainly because the effort to update them could not be justified, repeatedly pushing them down the "todo" list.
Community edition deployments of MongoDB also tend to be up to date. Turner attributed that to MongoDB developers being eager to stay current with functionality and not get left behind.
And then there's the old stalwart, MySQL.
Support for MySQL 5.7 finally ended in 2023, but enough customers are sticking with it that companies such as Percona reckon there is a business in keeping the lights on for a little longer.
"MySQL is the open source database with the biggest percentage of older versions. Currently, version 8.0 does not deliver like-for-like performance compared to version 5.7 – so, some DBAs and teams have held off making that move until they can get to at least parity," he told us.
"It can be hard to justify projects that don't have a tangible outcome or business benefit at the best of times, so a project that would lead to lower performance levels is a tough sell, even if support is needed."
Upgrading a database can be a risky endeavor. How does the new version handle SQL? Are there language quirks that need to be considered? This writer remembers the arguments around updating an obsolete database server well. Did the cost of revalidation outweigh the cost of paying the vendor for a few more years of support?
SQL Server 2022's showing demonstrates the conservatism of admins whose priority is keeping things running with minimal interruptions. Despite the shrill exhortations to move to the cloud or switch to a continually updating subscription model, for many, leaving well alone that beige box under the desk which has been running a business-critical application for years remains the safest course of action. ®