DBMS > IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Oracle vs. Vertica vs. Virtuoso

System Properties Comparison IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Oracle vs. Vertica vs. Virtuoso

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Widely used RDBMS

Cloud or off-cloud analytical database and query engine for structured and semi-structured streaming and batch data. Machine learning platform with built-in algorithms, data preparation capabilities, and model evaluation and management via SQL or Python.

Virtuoso is a multi-model hybrid-RDBMS that supports management of data represented as relational tables and/or property graphs

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Column oriented

Document store
Graph DBMS
Native XML DBMS
Relational DBMS
RDF store
Search engine

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	1236.29
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	10.68
Rank	#43	Overall
	#27	Relational DBMS

Score	4.26
Rank	#78	Overall
	#13	Document stores
	#4	Graph DBMS
	#2	Native XML DBMS
	#42	Relational DBMS
	#2	RDF stores
	#9	Search engines

Website

www.ibm.com/products/db2

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

www.oracle.com/database

www.vertica.com

virtuoso.openlinksw.com

Technical documentation

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

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

docs.oracle.com/en/database

vertica.com/documentation

docs.openlinksw.com/virtuoso

Developer

IBM

Microsoft

Oracle

OpenText

previously Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard

OpenLink Software

Initial release

1983

host version

1989

1980

2005

1998

Current release

12.1, October 2016

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

23c, September 2023

12.0.3, January 2023

7.2.11, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free version is available

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Limited community edition free

Open Source

GPLv2, extended commercial license available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

on-premises, all major clouds - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and containers

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C and C++

C++

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Linux
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Linux

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

Yes, but also semi-structure/unstructured data storage, and complex hierarchical data (like Parquet) stored and/or queried.

yes

SQL - Standard relational schema
RDF - Quad (S, P, O, G) or Triple (S, P, O)
XML - DTD, XML Schema
DAV - freeform filesystem objects, plus User Defined Types a/k/a Dynamic Extension Type

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

No Indexes Required. Different internal optimization strategy, but same functionality included.

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

Full 1999 standard plus machine learning, time series and geospatial. Over 650 functions.

yes

SQL-92, SQL-200x, SQL-3, SQLX

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

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

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

ADO.NET
JDBC
Kafka Connector
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spark Connector
vSQL

character-based, interactive, front-end utility

ADO.NET
GeoSPARQL
HTTP API
JDBC
Jena RDF API
ODBC
OLE DB
RDF4J API
RESTful HTTP API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SOAP webservices
SPARQL 1.1
WebDAV
XPath
XQuery
XSLT

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R

.Net
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

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

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

yes, PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, with minor differences

yes

Virtuoso PL

Triggers

yes

yes, called Custom Alerts

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

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

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

horizontal partitioning, hierarchical partitioning

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication

One, or more copies of data replicated across nodes, or object-store used for repository.

Chain, star, and bi-directional replication
Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be realized in PL/SQL

Bi-directional Spark integration

yes

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

isolation level can be parameterized

ACID

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

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard; supports Kerberos, LDAP, Ident and hash

Fine-grained Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) in addition to typical coarse-grained Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) according to SQL-standard. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Deploy-anywhere database for large-scale analytical deployments. Deploy off-cloud,...
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Virtuoso is a modern multi-model RDBMS for managing data represented as tabular relations...
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Competitive advantages

Fast, scalable, and capable of high concurrency. Separation of compute/storage leverages...
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Performance & Scale — as exemplified by DBpedia and the LOD Cloud it spawned, i.e.,...
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Typical application scenarios

Communication and network analytics, Embedded analytics, Fraud monitoring and Risk...
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Used for — Analytics/BI Conceptual Data Virtualization Enterprise Knowledge Graphs...
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Key customers

Abiba Systems, Adform, adMarketplace, AmeriPride, Anritsu, AOL, Avito, Auckland Transport,...
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Broad use across enterprises and governments including — European Union (EU) US Government...
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Market metrics

Largest installed-base of Multi-Model RDBMS for AI-friendly Knowledge Graphs Platform...
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Licensing and pricing models

Cost-based models and subscription-based models are both available. One license is...
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Available in both Commercial Enterprise and Open Source (GPL v2) Editions Feature...
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