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DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. Milvus vs. PostgreSQL vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. Milvus vs. PostgreSQL vs. VoltDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameMicrosoft SQL Server  Xexclude from comparisonMilvus  Xexclude from comparisonPostgreSQL  Xexclude from comparisonVoltDB  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionMicrosofts flagship relational DBMSA DBMS designed for efficient storage of vector data and vector similarity searchesWidely used open source RDBMS infoDeveloped as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQLDistributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS infoUsed for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory
Primary database modelRelational DBMSVector DBMSRelational DBMS infowith object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.Relational DBMS
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Document store
Graph DBMS infowith Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS infowith pgvector extension
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score824.29
Rank#3  Overall
#3  Relational DBMS
Score2.31
Rank#113  Overall
#3  Vector DBMS
Score645.54
Rank#4  Overall
#4  Relational DBMS
Score1.44
Rank#158  Overall
#73  Relational DBMS
Websitewww.microsoft.com/­en-us/­sql-servermilvus.iowww.postgresql.orgwww.voltdb.com
Technical documentationlearn.microsoft.com/­en-US/­sql/­sql-servermilvus.io/­docs/­overview.mdwww.postgresql.org/­docsdocs.voltdb.com
DeveloperMicrosoftPostgreSQL Global Development Group infowww.postgresql.org/­developerVoltDB Inc.
Initial release198920191989 info1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL2010
Current releaseSQL Server 2022, November 20222.3.4, January 202416.2, February 202411.3, April 2022
License infoCommercial or Open Sourcecommercial inforestricted free version is availableOpen Source infoApache Version 2.0Open Source infoBSDOpen Source infoAGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenononono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
Zilliz Cloud – Cloud-native service for MilvusAiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools.
Implementation languageC++C++, GoCJava, C++
Server operating systemsLinux
Windows
Linux
macOS info10.14 or later
Windows infowith WSL 2 enabled
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows
Linux
OS X infofor development
Data schemeyesyesyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesVector, Numeric and Stringyesyes
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.yesnoyes infospecific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.
Secondary indexesyesnoyesyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLyesnoyes infostandard with numerous extensionsyes infoonly a subset of SQL 99
APIs and other access methodsADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)
RESTful HTTP APIADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects
Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
Supported programming languagesC#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java infoJDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl
C#
C++
Erlang infonot officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript infoNode.js
PHP
Python
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresTransact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Javanouser defined functions inforealized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.Java
Triggersyesnoyesno
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodestables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federationShardingpartitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hashSharding
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesyes, but depending on the SQL-Server EditionSource-replica replication infoother methods possible by using 3rd party extensionsMulti-source replication
Source-replica replication
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnononono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyBounded Staleness
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Session Consistency
Tunable Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyesnoyesno infoFOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACIDnoACIDACID infoTransactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes infoData access is serialized by the server
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyes infoSnapshots and command logging
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yesyesno
User concepts infoAccess controlfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardRole based access control and fine grained access rightsfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardUsers and roles with access to stored procedures
More information provided by the system vendor
Microsoft SQL ServerMilvusPostgreSQLVoltDB
Specific characteristicsMilvus is an open-source and cloud-native vector database built for production-ready...
» more
Competitive advantagesHighly available, versatile, and robust with millisecond latency. Supports batch...
» more
Typical application scenariosRAG: retrieval augmented generation Video media : video understanding, video deduplication....
» more
Key customersMilvus is trusted by thousands of enterprises, including PayPal, eBay, IKEA, LINE,...
» more
Market metricsAs of January 2024, 25k+ GitHub stars 10M+ downloads and installations​ ​ 3k+ enterprise...
» more
Licensing and pricing modelsMilvus was released under the open-source Apache License 2.0 in October 2019. Fully-managed...
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More resources
Microsoft SQL ServerMilvusPostgreSQLVoltDB
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