DBMS > Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. MongoDB vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. MongoDB vs. Realm

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Search-as-a-service for web and mobile app development

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

One of the most popular document stores available both as a fully managed cloud service and for deployment on self-managed infrastructure

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

Primary database model

Search engine

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS
Search engine

integrated Lucene index, currently in MongoDB Atlas only.
Time Series DBMS

Time Series Collections introduced in Release 5.0
Vector DBMS

currently available in the MongoDB Atlas cloud service only

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

Score	5.59
Rank	#63	Overall
	#7	Search engines

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	421.65
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Website

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search

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

www.mongodb.com

realm.io

Technical documentation

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search

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

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

realm.io/docs

Developer

Microsoft

MongoDB, Inc

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

2015

1989

2009

2014

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

6.0.7, June 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

MongoDB Inc.'s Server Side Public License v1. Prior versions were published under GNU AGPL v3.0. Commercial licenses are also available.

Open Source

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Although schema-free, documents of the same collection often follow the same structure. Optionally impose all or part of a schema by defining a JSON schema.

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, integer, double, decimal, boolean, date, object_id, geospatial

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

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

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

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

Supported programming languages

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

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

Actionscript

unofficial driver
C
C#
C++
Clojure

unofficial driver
ColdFusion

unofficial driver
D

unofficial driver
Dart

unofficial driver
Delphi

unofficial driver
Erlang
Go
Groovy

unofficial driver
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Lisp

unofficial driver
Lua

unofficial driver
MatLab

unofficial driver
Perl
PHP
PowerShell

unofficial driver
Prolog

unofficial driver
Python
R

unofficial driver
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Smalltalk

unofficial driver
Swift

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

JavaScript

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

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

Sharding

Partitioned by hashed, ranged, or zoned sharding keys. Live resharding allows users to change their shard keys as an online operation with zero downtime.

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-Source deployments with MongoDB Atlas Global Clusters
Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

yes

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

yes

using Azure authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
» more

Competitive advantages

Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
» more

Typical application scenarios

AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
» more

Key customers

ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
» more

Market metrics

Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
» more

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