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DBMS > Elasticsearch vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Oracle vs. PostgreSQL vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Elasticsearch vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Oracle vs. PostgreSQL vs. Sphinx

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameElasticsearch  Xexclude from comparisonMicrosoft SQL Server  Xexclude from comparisonOracle  Xexclude from comparisonPostgreSQL  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionA distributed, RESTful modern search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene infoElasticsearch lets you perform and combine many types of searches such as structured, unstructured, geo, and metricMicrosofts flagship relational DBMSWidely used RDBMSWidely used open source RDBMS infoDeveloped as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQLOpen source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases
Primary database modelSearch engineRelational DBMSRelational DBMSRelational DBMS infowith object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.Search engine
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS
Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Document store
Graph DBMS infowith Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store infowith Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS infowith Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS infosince Oracle 23
Document store
Graph DBMS infowith Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS infowith pgvector extension
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score135.35
Rank#7  Overall
#1  Search engines
Score824.29
Rank#3  Overall
#3  Relational DBMS
Score1236.29
Rank#1  Overall
#1  Relational DBMS
Score645.54
Rank#4  Overall
#4  Relational DBMS
Score5.98
Rank#56  Overall
#5  Search engines
Websitewww.elastic.co/­elasticsearchwww.microsoft.com/­en-us/­sql-serverwww.oracle.com/­databasewww.postgresql.orgsphinxsearch.com
Technical documentationwww.elastic.co/­guide/­en/­elasticsearch/­reference/­current/­index.htmllearn.microsoft.com/­en-US/­sql/­sql-serverdocs.oracle.com/­en/­databasewww.postgresql.org/­docssphinxsearch.com/­docs
DeveloperElasticMicrosoftOraclePostgreSQL Global Development Group infowww.postgresql.org/­developerSphinx Technologies Inc.
Initial release2010198919801989 info1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL2001
Current release8.6, January 2023SQL Server 2022, November 202223c, September 202316.3, May 20243.5.1, February 2023
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoElastic Licensecommercial inforestricted free version is availablecommercial inforestricted free version is availableOpen Source infoBSDOpen Source infoGPL version 2, commercial licence available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenonononono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase 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.
  • Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools.
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Implementation languageJavaC++C and C++CC++
Server operating systemsAll OS with a Java VMLinux
Windows
AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows
FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeschema-free infoFlexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistentyesyes infoSchemaless in JSON and XML columnsyesyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyesyesno
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.noyesyesyes infospecific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.
Secondary indexesyes infoAll search fields are automatically indexedyesyesyesyes infofull-text index on all search fields
SQL infoSupport of SQLSQL-like query languageyesyes infowith proprietary extensionsyes infostandard with numerous extensionsSQL-like query language (SphinxQL)
APIs and other access methodsJava API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)
JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)
ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects
Proprietary protocol
Supported programming languages.Net
Groovy
Community Contributed Clients
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic
C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic
.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java infoJDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl
C++ infounofficial client library
Java
Perl infounofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby infounofficial client library
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresyesTransact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) JavaPL/SQL infoalso stored procedures in Java possibleuser defined functions inforealized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.no
Triggersyes infoby using the 'percolation' featureyesyesyesno
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingtables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federationSharding, horizontal partitioningpartitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hashSharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesyesyes, but depending on the SQL-Server EditionMulti-source replication
Source-replica replication
Source-replica replication infoother methods possible by using 3rd party extensionsnone
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsES-Hadoop Connectornono infocan be realized in PL/SQLnono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemEventual Consistency infoSynchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, allImmediate ConsistencyImmediate ConsistencyImmediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integritynoyesyesyesno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of datanoACIDACID infoisolation level can be parameterizedACIDno
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyesyes infoThe original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.Memcached and Redis integrationyesyes infoVersion 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'no
User concepts infoAccess controlfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardno

More information provided by the system vendor

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ElasticsearchMicrosoft SQL ServerOraclePostgreSQLSphinx
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