Planning for future IT growth

[Cromulent]

I'm in the process of trying to start a business, and one aspect of that is deciding what my central technology points are going to be for the company moving forward. I've settled on ASP.NET Core 3.0 as my web stack and .NET Core 3.0 for doing other tasks as well.

But what I am struggling with is whether I should Microsoft SQL Server or PostgreSQL and what are the advantages of spending the massive amounts on SQL Server compared to PostgreSQL.

I also need to look into server operating systems and choose between SUSE, Ubuntu or Windows Server really (I'm not a fan of RHEL or CentOS).

How do people go about making these decisions which will have ramifications years maybe even decades after they were made?

 

[Deleted member 77746]

I'm in the process of trying to start a business, and one aspect of that is deciding what my central technology points are going to be for the company moving forward. I've settled on ASP.NET Core 3.0 as my web stack and .NET Core 3.0 for doing other tasks as well.

But what I am struggling with is whether I should Microsoft SQL Server or PostgreSQL and what are the advantages of spending the massive amounts on SQL Server compared to PostgreSQL.

I also need to look into server operating systems and choose between SUSE, Ubuntu or Windows Server really (I'm not a fan of RHEL or CentOS).

How do people go about making these decisions which will have ramifications years maybe even decades after they were made?

They usually don't. Most decisions are made in IT 1 year early from experience and they decide at the time what's best to move forward from there.

 

[Cromulent]

They usually don't. Most decisions are made in IT 1 year early from experience, and they decide at the time what's best to move forward from there.

Well, in that case, I guess using ASP.NET Core 3.0 running on Ubuntu servers and using the PostgreSQL database would be the best solution as I'm not sure if I would be able to fund the SQL Server and Windows Server licensing fees. I can also support a bit of Python if people need to do some small tasks that don't require massive coding output.

I'm just a bit worried that my decisions might be tainted by my own personal likes and dislikes and things I have tried and have not tried. I want to as far as possible evaluate the options as near as I can to each other.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

Well, in that case, I guess using ASP.NET Core 3.0 running on Ubuntu servers and using the PostgreSQL database would be the best solution as I'm not sure if I would be able to fund the SQL Server and Windows Server licensing fees. I can also support a bit of Python if people need to do some small tasks that don't require massive coding output.

I'm just a bit worried that my decisions might be tainted by my own personal likes and dislikes and things I have tried and have not tried. I want to as far as possible evaluate the options as near as I can to each other.

You can only go on what you know unless you have a team there on standby ready to jump in the meetings. Don't over think just go for it and worry about it later.

 

[Cromulent]

You can only go on what you know unless you have a team there on standby ready to jump in the meetings. Don't over think just go for it and worry about it later.

Thanks. That seems to be the sensible thing to do. My primary concerns are whether the technology is going to be supported long term and with Microsoft, firmly behind .NET Core, I think it will be around for a very long time. PostgreSQL is not going anywhere either so I think I'm safe on those two items. Where I become somewhat hazy is with front end JavaScript development as I haven't done an awful lot with these. I guess I'll just have to ask people advice on what is the current thing that is recommended. I did have a brief glance around and remembered that I liked the of Vue.js but we will see once I've done some more research.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

Thanks. That seems to be the sensible thing to do. My primary concerns are whether the technology is going to be supported long term and with Microsoft, firmly behind .NET Core, I think it will be around for a very long time. PostgreSQL is not going anywhere either so I think I'm safe on those two items. Where I become somewhat hazy is with front end JavaScript development as I haven't done an awful lot with these. I guess I'll just have to ask people advice on what is the current thing that is recommended. I did have a brief glance around and remembered that I liked the of Vue.js but we will see once I've done some more research.

If you implement something now that you are comfortable with and in the future make a project out of it at a later date to migrate. With all coding things move and people eventually stop programming in it once something new comes along.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

If there is decent support for PostgreSQL in dotnet Core, I would absolutely avoid SQL Server which is *insanely* expensive.

 

[Cromulent]

If there is decent support for PostgreSQL in dotnet Core, I would absolutely avoid SQL Server which is *insanely* expensive.

I've used the PostgreSQL .NET library in the past for other applications and the support seemed good enough to me.