DBMS > H2 vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Milvus vs. PostgreSQL vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison H2 vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Milvus vs. PostgreSQL vs. VoltDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

A DBMS designed for efficient storage of vector data and vector similarity searches

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

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

Score	8.33
Rank	#46	Overall
	#30	Relational DBMS

Score	76.78
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	2.78
Rank	#103	Overall
	#3	Vector DBMS

Score	636.25
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	1.47
Rank	#157	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

www.h2database.com

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

milvus.io

www.postgresql.org

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

www.h2database.com/html/main.html

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

milvus.io/docs/overview.md

www.postgresql.org/docs

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Thomas Mueller

Microsoft

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2005

2010

2019

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2010

Current release

2.2.220, July 2023

V12

2.3.4, January 2024

16.3, May 2024

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

dual-licence (Mozilla public license, Eclipse public license)

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

BSD

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

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Implementation language

Java

C++

C++, Go

Java, C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

Linux
macOS

10.14 or later
Windows

with WSL 2 enabled

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Vector, Numeric and String

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard with numerous extensions

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP API

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

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

Java

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions

Transact SQL

user defined functions

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

Java

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

With clustering: 2 database servers on different computers operate on identical copies of a database

yes, with always 3 replicas available

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Session Consistency
Tunable Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Snapshots and command logging

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Role based access control and fine grained access rights

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Milvus is an open-source and cloud-native vector database built for production-ready...
» more

Competitive advantages

Highly available, versatile, and robust with millisecond latency. Supports batch...
» more

Typical application scenarios

RAG: retrieval augmented generation Video media : video understanding, video deduplication....
» more

Key customers

Milvus is trusted by thousands of enterprises, including PayPal, eBay, IKEA, LINE,...
» more

Market metrics

As of January 2024, 25k+ GitHub stars 10M+ downloads and installations 3k+ enterprise...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Milvus was released under the open-source Apache License 2.0 in October 2019. Fully-managed...
» 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.

Related products and services

3rd parties

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SharePlex is the reliable and affordable data replication solution for PostgreSQL migrations, high availability and more.
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pgDash: In-Depth PostgreSQL Monitoring.
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Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres: An Enterprise Grade PostgreSQL with the flexibility of a hybrid cloud solution combined with industry leading security, availability and performance.
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Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools.
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Redgate webinars: A series of key topics for new PostgreSQL users.
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Instaclustr: Fully Hosted & Managed PostgreSQL
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Timescale: Calling all PostgreSQL users – the 2023 State of PostgreSQL survey is now open! Share your favorite extensions, preferred frameworks, community experiences, and more. Take the survey today!
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Navicat for PostgreSQL is an easy-to-use graphical tool for PostgreSQL database development.
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We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

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