Why Doesn't Urchin 6 Support Microsoft SQL Server?

We occasionally get this question from people who are not familiar with MySQL or PostgreSQL - the two databases that Urchin 6 supports. Although there's no official answer to this question, we can provide some educated guesses:

• Microsoft SQL adds an additional (hidden) cost to Urchin 6
• More hardware requirements
• MS SQL requires more administration
• A frosty Google/Microsoft relationship
• There are acceptable alternatives

Some companies have a standard of only using Microsoft SQL on their internal network, prohibiting any other database servers such as MySQL or PostgreSQL. If you have such a standard, here some things to consider before entirely blowing off Urchin as a solution to your web analytics needs:

MySQL is Free
Urchin 6 only requires the free community server edition of MySQL to be installed locally.

The Urchin database is lightweight
A MySQL database is only used by Urchin 6 to store configuration information (profiles, filters, users, etc.). All processed data is stored in an Urchin-proprietary format outside of this database.

Easy to use
MySQL is extremely simple to set up and use. It is widely used, so thanks to the large community, there are many free help documents and discussion forums online to provide assistance. If any additional help is needed Actual Metrics can assist. Once installed, only two commands must be executed before installing Urchin. Click here for help setting up the MySQL database

Operating System Support
MySQL is available free for both Windows and Linux, giving you more options for your Urchin server.

Secure
Urchin only requires read/write access to its database, no other MySQL databases that may be installed. Also MySQL is not coupled with system users, it uses its own set of users.

Click here to get started using MySQL!