DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. PostgreSQL vs. RavenDB vs. RethinkDB vs. Snowflake
System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. PostgreSQL vs. RavenDB vs. RethinkDB vs. Snowflake
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| Name | Microsoft SQL Server Xexclude from comparison | PostgreSQL Xexclude from comparison | RavenDB Xexclude from comparison | RethinkDB Xexclude from comparison | Snowflake Xexclude from comparison | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Description | Microsofts flagship relational DBMS | Widely used open source RDBMS  Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL | Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database | DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime. | Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Primary database model | Relational DBMS | Relational DBMS with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module. | Document store | Document store | Relational DBMS | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary database models | Document store Graph DBMS Spatial DBMS | Document store Graph DBMS with Apache AgeSpatial DBMS Vector DBMS with pgvector extension | Graph DBMS Spatial DBMS Time Series DBMS | Spatial DBMS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Website | www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server | www.postgresql.org | ravendb.net | rethinkdb.com | www.snowflake.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technical documentation | learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server | www.postgresql.org/docs | ravendb.net/docs | rethinkdb.com/docs | docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Developer | Microsoft | PostgreSQL Global Development Group www.postgresql.org/developer | Hibernating Rhinos | The Linux Foundation since July 2017 | Snowflake Computing Inc. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Initial release | 1989 | 1989 1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL | 2010 | 2009 | 2014 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Current release | SQL Server 2022, November 2022 | 16.3, May 2024 | 5.4, July 2022 | 2.4.1, August 2020 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| License Commercial or Open Source | commercial restricted free version is available | Open Source BSD | Open Source AGPL version 3, commercial license available | Open Source Apache Version 2 | commercial | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cloud-based only Only available as a cloud service | no | no | no | no | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Implementation language | C++ | C | C# | C++ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server operating systems | Linux Windows | FreeBSD HP-UX Linux NetBSD OpenBSD OS X Solaris Unix Windows | Linux macOS Raspberry Pi Windows | Linux OS X Windows | hosted | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data scheme | yes | yes | schema-free | schema-free | yes support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Typing predefined data types such as float or date | yes | yes | no | yes string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry | 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 | yes specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality. | no | yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary indexes | yes | yes | yes | yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SQL Support of SQL | yes | yes standard with numerous extensions | SQL-like query language (RQL) | no | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| APIs and other access methods | ADO.NET JDBC ODBC OLE DB Tabular Data Stream (TDS) | ADO.NET JDBC native C library ODBC streaming API for large objects | .NET Client API F# Client API Go Client API Java Client API NodeJS Client API PHP Client API Python Client API RESTful HTTP API | CLI Client JDBC ODBC | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Supported programming languages | C# C++ Delphi Go Java JavaScript (Node.js) PHP Python R Ruby Visual Basic | .Net C C++ Delphi Java JDBCJavaScript (Node.js) Perl PHP Python Tcl | .Net C# F# Go Java JavaScript (Node.js) PHP Python Ruby | C community-supported driver C# community-supported driverC++ community-supported driverClojure community-supported driverDart community-supported driverErlang community-supported driverGo community-supported driverHaskell community-supported driverJava official driverJavaScript (Node.js) official driverLisp community-supported driverLua community-supported driverObjective-C community-supported driverPerl community-supported driverPHP community-supported driverPython official driverRuby official driverScala community-supported driver | JavaScript (Node.js) Python | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server-side scripts Stored procedures | Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java | user defined functions realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc. | yes | user defined functions | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Triggers | yes | yes | yes | Client-side triggers through changefeeds | no 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 | partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash | Sharding | Sharding range based | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Replication methods Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes | yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition | Source-replica replication other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions | Multi-source replication | Source-replica replication | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MapReduce Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods | no | no | yes | yes | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Consistency concepts Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system | Immediate Consistency | 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 | Immediate Consistency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Foreign keys Referential integrity | yes | yes | no | no | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Transaction concepts Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data | ACID | ACID | ACID, Cluster-wide transaction available | Atomic single-document operations | ACID | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Concurrency Support for concurrent manipulation of data | yes | yes | yes | yes MVCC based | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Durability Support for making data persistent | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In-memory capabilities Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only. | yes | no | no | no | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| User concepts Access control | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | Authorization levels configured per client per database | yes users and table-level permissions | Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Microsoft SQL Server | PostgreSQL | RavenDB | RethinkDB | Snowflake | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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