DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. NebulaGraph vs. RavenDB vs. Sphinx vs. TiDB

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. NebulaGraph vs. RavenDB vs. Sphinx vs. TiDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A distributed, linear scalable, high perfomant Graph DBMS

Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

TiDB is an open source distributed SQL database that supports Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP) workloads. It is MySQL compatible and features horizontal scalability, strong consistency, and high availability.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Document store

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

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.14
Rank	#120	Overall
	#10	Graph DBMS

Score	2.92
Rank	#101	Overall
	#18	Document stores

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	4.66
Rank	#70	Overall
	#38	Relational DBMS

Website

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

github.com/vesoft-inc/nebula
www.nebula-graph.io

ravendb.net

sphinxsearch.com

pingcap.com

Technical documentation

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

docs.nebula-graph.io

ravendb.net/docs

sphinxsearch.com/docs

docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable

Developer

Microsoft

Vesoft Inc.

Hibernating Rhinos

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

PingCAP, Inc.

Initial release

1989

2019

2010

2001

2016

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.4, July 2022

3.5.1, February 2023

8.0.0, March 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0 + Common Clause 1.0

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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.

TiDB Cloud: Fully-managed TiDB Service. Bring everything great about TiDB to the cloud.

Implementation language

C++

Go, Rust

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

Linux

Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

Strong typed schema

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

Nebula Graph internally uses the Key-Value store RocksDB for persistency. The vertices, edges, and their properties are stored as Key while their values are stored as Value. The primary indexes are per Key and secondary indexes are per Value.

yes

full-text index on all search fields

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language

SQL-like query language (RQL)

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

yes

APIs and other access methods

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

Browser interface
console (shell)
Cypher Query Language
GO Object Graph Mapper
Java Object Graph Mapper
NGBatis

ORM framework for NebulaGraph and Spring-Boot
Proprietary native API
Python Object Graph Mapper
Query language nGQL

.NET Client API
F# Client API
Go Client API
Java Client API
NodeJS Client API
PHP Client API
Python Client API
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

GORM
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
SQLAlchemy

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
C++
Go
Java
PHP
Python

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

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

user defined functions

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

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

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

Multi-source replication

none

Using Raft consensus algorithm to ensure data replication with strong consistency among multiple replicas.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with TiSpark Connector

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Default ACID transactions on the local node (eventually consistent across the cluster). Atomic operations with cluster-wide ACID transactions. Eventual consistency for indexes and full-text search indexes.

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

yes

full support since version 6.6

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID, Cluster-wide transaction available

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using RocksDB

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Role-based access control

Authorization levels configured per client per database

Fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

NebulaGraph is a truly distributed, linearly scalable, lightning-fast graph database,...
» more

TiDB is an advanced open-source, distributed SQL database for modern application...
» more

Competitive advantages

NebulaGraph boasts the world's only graph database solution that is able to host...
» more

- HORIZONTAL SCALING : TiDB grants total transparency into your data workloads without...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Social networking Fraud detection Knowledge graph Data warehouse management Anti...
» more

TiDB is ideal for transactional applications that require extreme scalability and...
» more

Key customers

Companies from a variety of industries have implemented NebulaGraph Database in production,...
» more

Block, Pinterest, Catalyst, Bolt, Flipkart, Capcom, Shopee (E-commerce), JD Cloud...
» more

Market metrics

At our very early stage, NebulaGraph has already received over 10,000 stars on GitHub...
» more

34K+ GitHub stars 5K+ members in TiDB Community Slack 1K+ community contributors...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

NebulaGraph is open source and free to use under Apache 2.0 license.
» more

TiDB Community : Free open source software (Apache 2.0) TiDB Self-Hosted : Enterprise...
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.