DBMS > Citus vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Postgres-XL vs. QuestDB

System Properties Comparison Citus vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Postgres-XL vs. QuestDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Scalable hybrid operational and analytics RDBMS for big data use cases based on PostgreSQL

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.15
Rank	#123	Overall
	#60	Relational DBMS

Score	829.80
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.52
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	2.48
Rank	#115	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Website

www.citusdata.com

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

www.postgres-xl.org

questdb.io

Technical documentation

docs.citusdata.com

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

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

questdb.io/docs

Developer

Microsoft

QuestDB Technology Inc

Initial release

2010

1989

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2014

Current release

8.1, December 2018

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

10 R1, October 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

Implementation language

C++

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

Linux

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

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

specific XML type available, but no XML query functionality

yes

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

SQL with time-series extensions

APIs and other access methods

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

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

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

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Supported programming languages

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

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

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

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

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

MVCC

ACID for single-table writes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

through memory mapped files

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

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