DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. PostgreSQL vs. Riak TS vs. SpaceTime

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. PostgreSQL vs. Riak TS vs. SpaceTime

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Riak TS is a distributed NoSQL database optimized for time series data and based on Riak KV

SpaceTime is a spatio-temporal DBMS with a focus on performance.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Time Series DBMS

Spatial DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

Relational DBMS

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

Score	807.76
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	644.36
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	0.17
Rank	#318	Overall
	#27	Time Series DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#385	Overall
	#7	Spatial DBMS

Website

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

www.postgresql.org

www.mireo.com/spacetime

Technical documentation

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

www.postgresql.org/docs

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/ts/latest

Developer

Microsoft

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Open Source, formerly Basho Technologies

Mireo

Initial release

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2015

2020

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

16.4, August 2024

3.0.0, September 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

BSD

Open Source

commercial

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.

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Implementation language

C++

Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X

Linux

Data scheme

yes

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard with numerous extensions

yes, limited

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

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

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

C#
C++
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.

Erlang

Triggers

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

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

Fixed-grid hypercubes

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

selectable replication factor

Real-time block device replication (DRBD)

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

links between datasets can be stored

Transaction concepts

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

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

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

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Related products and services

3rd parties

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More resources

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Conferences, events and webinars

more DBMS events

PASS Data Community Summit
Seattle, Washington, 4-8 November 2024

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