Support Microsoft SQL Server

[polderudo]

Are there any plans for this?
This would be a killer feature, especially for existing projects in enterprise companies, that often use MSSQL.

[stephenafamo]

It's a mixed bag.

Because of the architecture of Bob, it is a lot of work to properly support a new dialect. In addition, I wasn't sure of the demand, and I am reluctant to do months of unnecessary work, and also have to maintain it going forward.

Sure, SQL Server is very popular, but I don't see it talked about a lot among Go devs.
As an rough comparison, the most popular mssql driver has 1.9k stars compared to MySQL's 15.3k stars

On the other hand, I've been considering ways to generate a bit of revenue for this project to ensure that it will always be properly maintained (by myself or someone else).
An idea I had is to have some drivers in a paid package similar to River Pro.

Open source databases (e.g. Postgres, MySQL, SQLite, MariaDB) would be part of the open source package.
Paid databases (e.g. SQL Server, Oracle, Spanner, e.t.c.) would be part of the paid package.

[polderudo]

Yes i get you. I am also unsure about that. We try to use postgres as much as possible, but in bigger enterprises we are often bound to the stack they set up and MSSQL is seemed to be used mostly, because it integrates "good" into their workflows.
A paid version would be ok, however. For now, we go with jmoiron/sqlx as we added only some simple queries only.
In any case, try to generate revenue for this project. It really rocks and has become a core part of our dev stack.

[stephenafamo]

What would you say are the realistic chances that your company would be willing to pay for an MSSQL driver for Bob?
Especially since this is not a very common practice in Go, I wonder if companies would be willing to pay at all.

[polderudo]

We would definitely be willing to pay for it. But we might be in a special case. We have customers that use only MSSQL, but then also some, where we use Postgres for our software and have to work also with MSSQL as a secondary db.
And to be honest, bob seems to be the right way to go for DB access, as it really has all included that one could think of.
But then again we also use Unidoc for PDF or other 3. party libs. Mainly, because we need supported libs. So yes, if there would be a paid version for MSSQL we would grab a license.

[stephenafamo]

This is very encouraging to hear. Any rough suggestions of what price would seem reasonable?

[polderudo]

Haha, that's a good question. First off, I am not a salesman in any way ... only tech guy here, but i think 100 to 150 $ per year would be ok, in order to use the lib on all projects that need MSSQL. But again... not salesman here.

[stephenafamo]

And here I was thinking $100-$200 per month 😅