DB-EnginesextremeDB - solve IoT connectivity disruptionsEnglish
Deutsch
Knowledge Base of Relational and NoSQL Database Management Systemsprovided by Redgate Software

DBMS > MariaDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison MariaDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SQLite

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameMariaDB  Xexclude from comparisonMicrosoft SQL Server  Xexclude from comparisonSQLite  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionMySQL 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 DBMSWidely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS
Primary database modelRelational DBMSRelational DBMSRelational DBMS
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Graph DBMS infowith OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS
Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score94.34
Rank#14  Overall
#10  Relational DBMS
Score785.01
Rank#3  Overall
#3  Relational DBMS
Score114.09
Rank#10  Overall
#7  Relational DBMS
Websitemariadb.com infoSite of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org infoSite of MariaDB Foundation
www.microsoft.com/­en-us/­sql-serverwww.sqlite.org
Technical documentationmariadb.com/­kb/­en/­librarylearn.microsoft.com/­en-US/­sql/­sql-serverwww.sqlite.org/­docs.html
DeveloperMariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server) infoThe lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL
MicrosoftDwayne Richard Hipp
Initial release2009 infoFork of MySQL, which was first released in 199519892000
Current release11.5.2, August 2024SQL Server 2022, November 20223.46.1  (13 August 2024), August 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoGPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription availablecommercial inforestricted free version is availableOpen Source infoPublic Domain
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenonono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase 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 languageC and C++C++C
Server operating systemsFreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows infoColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows
Linux
Windows
server-less
Data schemeyes infoDynamic columns are supportedyesyes infodynamic column types
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes infonot rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.
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.yesyesno
Secondary indexesyesyesyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infowith proprietary extensionsyesyes infoSQL-92 is not fully supported
APIs and other access methodsADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API
ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)
ADO.NET infoinofficial driver
JDBC infoinofficial driver
ODBC infoinofficial driver
Supported programming languagesAda
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
Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresyes infoPL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Javano
Triggersyesyesyes
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesseveral options for horizontal partitioning and Shardingtables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federationnone
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesMulti-source replication
Source-replica replication
yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Editionnone
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnonono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyImmediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyes infonot for MyISAM storage engineyesyes
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infonot for MyISAM storage engineACIDACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyes infovia file-system locks
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyes infonot for in-memory storage engineyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yes infowith MEMORY storage engineyesyes
User concepts infoAccess controlfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardno

More information provided by the system vendor

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

We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources
MariaDBMicrosoft SQL ServerSQLite
DB-Engines blog posts

MariaDB strengthens its position in the open source RDBMS market
5 April 2018, Matthias Gelbmann

PostgreSQL is the DBMS of the Year 2017
2 January 2018, Paul Andlinger, Matthias Gelbmann

Big gains for Relational Database Management Systems in DB-Engines Ranking
2 February 2016, Matthias Gelbmann

show all

MySQL is the DBMS of the Year 2019
3 January 2020, Matthias Gelbmann, Paul Andlinger

The struggle for the hegemony in Oracle's database empire
2 May 2017, Paul Andlinger

Microsoft SQL Server is the DBMS of the Year
4 January 2017, Matthias Gelbmann, Paul Andlinger

show all

Big gains for Relational Database Management Systems in DB-Engines Ranking
2 February 2016, Matthias Gelbmann

show all

Recent citations in the news

MariaDB CEO on database company regaining its mojo
24 March 2025, Blocks and Files

MariaDB reboots DBaaS plans with open source at the core
12 March 2025, theregister.com

K1 Acquires MariaDB, a Leading Database Software Company, and Appoints New CEO
10 September 2024, PR Newswire

Vector Storage, Indexing, and Search With MariaDB: What to Know About These New Features
28 January 2025, HackerNoon

How do you solve a problem like MariaDB? Cozy up to the community, says new CEO
12 October 2024, TechCrunch

provided by Google News

How to Recover Deleted Data from SQL Server without Backup
22 April 2025, Infosecurity Magazine

Why SQL Server Is Still Worth It
24 March 2025, Redmondmag.com

The year ahead for SQL Server: Ground to cloud to fabric
15 January 2025, Microsoft

SQL Server 2019 installation for Lab
27 January 2025, Spiceworks Community

Ola Hallengren’s SQL Server Maintenance Solution in AWS
8 March 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

provided by Google News

Zero-latency SQLite storage in every Durable Object
26 September 2024, The Cloudflare Blog

SQLite re-implemented in Rust to achieve asynchronous I/O and other changes
12 December 2024, devclass

Google’s AI Tool Big Sleep Finds Zero-Day Vulnerability in SQLite Database Engine
4 November 2024, The Hacker News

How to install SQLite on Windows
20 October 2024, theserverside.com

A Coding Guide to Build an Agentic AI‑Powered Asynchronous Ticketing Assistant Using PydanticAI Agents, Pydantic v2, and SQLite Database
22 April 2025, MarkTechPost

provided by Google News



Share this page

Featured Products

RaimaDB logo

RaimaDB, embedded database for mission-critical applications. When performance, footprint and reliability matters.
Try RaimaDB for free.

Neo4j logo

See for yourself how a graph database can make your life easier.
Use Neo4j online for free.

SingleStore logo

The data platform to build your intelligent applications.
Try it free.

Datastax Astra logo

Bring all your data to Generative AI applications with vector search enabled by the most scalable
vector database available.
Try for Free

Milvus logo

Vector database designed for GenAI, fully equipped for enterprise implementation.
Try Managed Milvus for Free

Present your product here