DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. Milvus vs. MongoDB vs. TerarkDB vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. Milvus vs. MongoDB vs. TerarkDB vs. VoltDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

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

A key-value store forked from RocksDB with advanced compression algorithms. It can be used standalone or as a storage engine for MySQL and MongoDB

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Secondary database models

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	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.31
Rank	#113	Overall
	#3	Vector DBMS

Score	421.65
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#60	Key-value stores

Score	1.44
Rank	#158	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

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

milvus.io

www.mongodb.com

github.com/bytedance/terarkdb

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

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

milvus.io/docs/overview.md

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

bytedance.larkoffice.com/docs/doccnZmYFqHBm06BbvYgjsHHcKc

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Microsoft

MongoDB, Inc

ByteDance, originally Terark

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

1989

2019

2009

2016

2010

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

2.3.4, January 2024

6.0.7, June 2023

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

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

commercial

restricted open source version available

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

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.

Zilliz Cloud – Cloud-native service for Milvus

MongoDB Flex @ STACKIT offers managed MongoDB Instances with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.
MongoDB Atlas: Global multi-cloud database with unmatched data distribution and mobility across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, built-in automation for resource and workload optimization, and so much more.

Implementation language

C++

C++, Go

C++

Java, C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS

10.14 or later
Windows

with WSL 2 enabled

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X

for development

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.

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Vector, Numeric and String

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

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

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

RESTful HTTP API

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

C++ API
Java API

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

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

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

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

C++
Java

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

JavaScript

Java

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

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

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

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

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Session Consistency
Tunable Consistency

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

Snapshots and command logging

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

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Role based access control and fine grained access rights

Access rights for users and roles

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Milvus is an open-source and cloud-native vector database built for production-ready...
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MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
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Competitive advantages

Highly available, versatile, and robust with millisecond latency. Supports batch...
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Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Typical application scenarios

RAG: retrieval augmented generation Video media : video understanding, video deduplication....
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AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
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Key customers

Milvus is trusted by thousands of enterprises, including PayPal, eBay, IKEA, LINE,...
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ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
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Market metrics

As of January 2024, 25k+ GitHub stars 10M+ downloads and installations 3k+ enterprise...
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Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
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Licensing and pricing models

Milvus was released under the open-source Apache License 2.0 in October 2019. Fully-managed...
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MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
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