DBMS > MariaDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Stardog vs. Vitess

System Properties Comparison MariaDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Stardog vs. Vitess

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

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

Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization

Scalable, distributed, cloud-native DBMS, extending MySQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.02
Rank	#123	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Score	0.82
Rank	#209	Overall
	#97	Relational DBMS

Website

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

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

www.stardog.com

vitess.io

Technical documentation

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

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

docs.stardog.com

vitess.io/docs

Developer

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

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Microsoft

Stardog-Union

The Linux Foundation, PlanetScale

Initial release

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

1989

2010

2013

Current release

11.3.2, February 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

7.3.0, May 2020

15.0.2, December 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0, commercial licenses available

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.

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Java

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Docker
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

yes

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

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

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

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

GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Jena RDF API
OWL
RDF4J API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SNARL
SPARQL
Spring Data
Stardog Studio
TinkerPop 3

ADO.NET
JDBC
MySQL protocol
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

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

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 and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

via event handlers

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

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

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

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Eventual Consistency across shards
Immediate Consistency within a shard

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

relationships in graphs

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

ACID at shard level

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

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

Access rights for users and roles

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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,...
» 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.