DBMS > MariaDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. OpenSearch vs. TerminusDB

System Properties Comparison MariaDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. OpenSearch vs. TerminusDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

Scalable Graph Database platform making enterprise data available by exploiting inferred entities and relationships

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Vector DBMS

Document store
RDF store

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

Score	83.44
Rank	#15	Overall
	#10	Relational DBMS

Score	807.76
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	16.31
Rank	#36	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Score	0.19
Rank	#311	Overall
	#27	Graph DBMS

Website

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

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

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

terminusdb.com

Technical documentation

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

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

opensearch.org/docs/latest

terminusdb.github.io/terminusdb/#

Developer

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

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Microsoft

Amazon Web Services

DataChemist Ltd.

Initial release

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

1989

2021

2018

Current release

11.5.2, August 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

2.5.0, January 2023

11.0.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

GPL V3

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.

STACKIT OpenSearch offers OpenSearch in a managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant, for a wide range of applications like analytics, website search, offering scalability and fast data access.

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Java

Prolog, Rust

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Linux
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Linux

Data scheme

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

yes

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

yes

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

All search fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

SQL-like query language

SQL-like query language (WOQL)

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

OWL
RESTful HTTP API
WOQL (Web Object Query Language)

Supported programming languages

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

JavaScript
Python

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

yes

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

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

Sharding

Graph Partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes

Journaling Streams

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

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

in-memory journaling

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

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Role-based access control

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
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OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
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Competitive advantages

MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
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Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
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Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
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The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
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Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
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Market metrics

MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
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Licensing and pricing models

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
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The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
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