DBMS > Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Milvus vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Milvus vs. Realm

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A DBMS designed for efficient storage of vector data and vector similarity searches

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Vector DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	76.78
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.78
Rank	#103	Overall
	#3	Vector DBMS

Score	7.41
Rank	#52	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Website

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

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

milvus.io

realm.io

Technical documentation

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

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

milvus.io/docs/overview.md

realm.io/docs

Developer

Microsoft

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

2010

1989

2019

2014

Current release

V12

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

2.3.4, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Zilliz Cloud – Cloud-native service for Milvus

Implementation language

C++

C++, Go

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS

10.14 or later
Windows

with WSL 2 enabled

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Vector, Numeric and String

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

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

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Transact SQL

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

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

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

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with always 3 replicas available

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

Bounded Staleness
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Session Consistency
Tunable Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

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

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Role based access control and fine grained access rights

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Milvus is an open-source and cloud-native vector database built for production-ready...
» more

Competitive advantages

Highly available, versatile, and robust with millisecond latency. Supports batch...
» more

Typical application scenarios

RAG: retrieval augmented generation Video media : video understanding, video deduplication....
» more

Key customers

Milvus is trusted by thousands of enterprises, including PayPal, eBay, IKEA, LINE,...
» more

Market metrics

As of January 2024, 25k+ GitHub stars 10M+ downloads and installations 3k+ enterprise...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Milvus was released under the open-source Apache License 2.0 in October 2019. Fully-managed...
» more

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