DBMS > Apache Drill vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Postgres-XL

System Properties Comparison Apache Drill vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Postgres-XL

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Schema-free SQL Query Engine for Hadoop, NoSQL and Cloud Storage

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	1.89
Rank	#122	Overall
	#22	Document stores
	#58	Relational DBMS

Score	774.89
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.33
Rank	#270	Overall
	#123	Relational DBMS

Website

drill.apache.org

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.postgres-xl.org

Technical documentation

drill.apache.org/docs

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Microsoft

Initial release

2012

1989

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

Current release

1.20.3, January 2023

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

10 R1, October 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL SELECT statement is SQL:2003 compliant

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

C++

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

MVCC

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

Depending on the underlying data source

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

Depending on the underlying data source

yes

User concepts

Access control

Depending on the underlying data source

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

Related products and services

We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

MySQL is the DBMS of the Year 2019
3 January 2020, Matthias Gelbmann, Paul Andlinger

The struggle for the hegemony in Oracle's database empire
2 May 2017, Paul Andlinger

Microsoft SQL Server is the DBMS of the Year
4 January 2017, Matthias Gelbmann, Paul Andlinger

show all

Recent citations in the news

Apache Drill vs. Apache Spark – Which SQL query engine is better for you?
23 September 2019, Towards Data Science

Apache Drill improves big data SQL query engine
31 August 2021, TechTarget

Apache Drill case study: A tutorial on processing CSV files
9 June 2016, theserverside.com

MapR Advances Support for Flexible and High Performance Analytics on JSON and S3 Data with Apache Drill
30 January 2019, Business Wire

Drill Mines Diverse Data Sets, Google Style
20 May 2015, The Next Platform

provided by Google News

Why SQL Server Is Still Worth It
24 March 2025, Redmondmag.com

The year ahead for SQL Server: Ground to cloud to fabric
15 January 2025, Microsoft

SQL Server 2019 installation for Lab
27 January 2025, Spiceworks Community

How to Recover Deleted Data from SQL Server without Backup
22 April 2025, Infosecurity Magazine

Ola Hallengren’s SQL Server Maintenance Solution in AWS
8 March 2025, Amazon Web Services

provided by Google News

Share this page