DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. MongoDB vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. MongoDB vs. Snowflake

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

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	774.89
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	402.51
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	172.01
Rank	#6	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

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

www.mongodb.com

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

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

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Microsoft

MongoDB, Inc

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

1989

2009

2014

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

7.0.5, January 2024

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.

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

yes

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.

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++

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

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

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

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

yes

APIs and other access methods

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

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

JavaScript

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

similar concept for controling cloud resources

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.

yes

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

yes

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

yes

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

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
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Competitive advantages

Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Typical application scenarios

AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
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Key customers

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