DBMS > MariaDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Sphinx vs. SQream DB

System Properties Comparison MariaDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Sphinx vs. SQream DB

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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

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

a GPU-based, columnar RDBMS for big data analytics workloads

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	93.81
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	829.80
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	6.03
Rank	#60	Overall
	#6	Search engines

Score	0.73
Rank	#228	Overall
	#105	Relational DBMS

Website

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

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

sphinxsearch.com

sqream.com

Technical documentation

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

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

sphinxsearch.com/docs

docs.sqream.com

Developer

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

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Microsoft

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

SQream Technologies

Initial release

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

1989

2001

2017

Current release

11.3.2, February 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

3.5.1, February 2023

2022.1.6, December 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

commercial

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.

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

C++, CUDA, Haskell, Java, Scala

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, ANSI Standard SQL Types

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

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

yes

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

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

Proprietary protocol

.Net
JDBC
ODBC

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

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
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

user defined functions in Python

Triggers

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

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

horizontal and vertical 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

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

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

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

yes

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
» more

Competitive advantages

MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
» more

Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
» more

Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
» more

Market metrics

MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
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