DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. Oracle vs. Postgres-XL vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. Oracle vs. Postgres-XL vs. Snowflake

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Widely used RDBMS

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	829.80
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	1234.27
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	0.52
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	123.20
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

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

www.oracle.com/database

www.postgres-xl.org

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

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

docs.oracle.com/en/database

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Microsoft

Oracle

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

1989

1980

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2014

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

23c, September 2023

10 R1, October 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Mozilla public license

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

Implementation language

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Linux
macOS

hosted

Data scheme

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

yes

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

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

yes

APIs and other access methods

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

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

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

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

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, horizontal partitioning

horizontal partitioning

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

ACID

MVCC

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

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