DBMS > Drizzle vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Sphinx vs. Tkrzw

System Properties Comparison Drizzle vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Sphinx vs. Tkrzw

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Drizzle has published its last release in September 2012. The open-source project is discontinued and Drizzle is excluded from the DB-Engines ranking.

Description

MySQL fork with a pluggable micro-kernel and with an emphasis of performance over compatibility.

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

A concept of libraries, allowing an application program to store and query key-value pairs in a file. Successor of Tokyo Cabinet and Kyoto Cabinet

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#60	Key-value stores

Website

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

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

sphinxsearch.com

dbmx.net/tkrzw

Technical documentation

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

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

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Drizzle project, originally started by Brian Aker

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Microsoft

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Mikio Hirabayashi

Initial release

2008

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

1989

2001

2020

Current release

7.2.4, September 2012

11.3.2, February 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

3.5.1, February 2023

0.9.3, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GNU GPL

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

Apache Version 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.

STACKIT MariaDB offers MariaDB in a fully managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant.

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++

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS

Data scheme

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

yes

schema-free

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

Secondary indexes

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

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

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

C
C++
Java
PHP

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

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

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

C++
Java
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

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

Triggers

hooks for callbacks inside the server can be used.

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

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

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

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

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

yes

using specific database classes

User concepts

Access control

Pluggable authentication mechanisms

e.g. LDAP, HTTP

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
» more

Competitive advantages

MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
» more

Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
» more

Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
» more

Market metrics

MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
» more

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.