In Octopus 3.0, we're switching from RavenDB to SQL Server

Paul Stovell, the founder of Octopus, discusses the transition from using RavenDB to SQL Server for their product, Octopus Deploy. Initially, RavenDB was chosen for its fast development capabilities, allowing rapid iteration, which was essential when building the minimum viable product. However, despite its ease of use during development, RavenDB presented significant challenges in production, primarily due to index/data corruption issues and API/usage errors that led to frequent support calls. These issues often arose from RavenDB's "safe by default" philosophy, which, while intended to prevent unbounded result sets, created unexpected behaviors in production environments. Consequently, Stovell and his team decided to switch to SQL Server for greater reliability and predictability, despite acknowledging that all databases have their shortcomings. He emphasizes that while the problems with RavenDB might partly be due to their implementation, SQL Server's well-known pitfalls offered a more stable production environment. Stovell plans to share further details about the integration of SQL Server in Octopus 3.0 in a subsequent post.