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DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. PostgreSQL vs. TiDB

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. PostgreSQL vs. TiDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameMicrosoft SQL Server  Xexclude from comparisonPostgreSQL  Xexclude from comparisonTiDB  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionMicrosofts flagship relational DBMSWidely used open source RDBMS infoDeveloped as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQLTiDB 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 modelRelational DBMSRelational DBMS infowith object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.Relational DBMS
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Document store
Graph DBMS infowith Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Document store
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score920.09
Rank#3  Overall
#3  Relational DBMS
Score617.90
Rank#4  Overall
#4  Relational DBMS
Score3.19
Rank#112  Overall
#56  Relational DBMS
Websitewww.microsoft.com/­en-us/­sql-serverwww.postgresql.orgpingcap.com
Technical documentationdocs.microsoft.com/­en-US/­sql/­sql-serverwww.postgresql.org/­docsdocs.pingcap.com/­tidb/­stable
DeveloperMicrosoftPostgreSQL Global Development Group infowww.postgresql.org/­developerPingCAP, Inc.
Initial release19891989 info1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL2016
Current releaseSQL Server 2022, November 202215.3, May 20237.0.0, March 2023
License infoCommercial or Open Sourcecommercial inforestricted free version is availableOpen Source infoBSDOpen Source infoApache 2.0
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenonono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
  • Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed and hosted PostgreSQL® with 70+ extensions and orchestration tooling included.
  • ScaleGrid for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL DBaaS hosting On-Premises and on clouds such as AWS, Azure, GCP and DigitalOcean with no vendor lock-in. Leverage any extension and get SSH access.
TiDB Cloud: Fully-managed TiDB Service. Bring everything great about TiDB to the cloud.
Implementation languageC++CGo, Rust
Server operating systemsLinux
Windows
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows
Linux
Data schemeyesyesyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.yesyes infospecific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.no
Secondary indexesyesyesyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLyesyes infostandard with numerous extensionsyes
APIs and other access methodsADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)
ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects
GORM
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
SQLAlchemy
Supported programming languagesC#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic
.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java infoJDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl
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 infoStored proceduresTransact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Javauser defined functions inforealized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.no
Triggersyesyesno
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodestables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federationpartitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hashhorizontal partitioning (by key range)
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesyes, but depending on the SQL-Server EditionSource-replica replication infoother methods possible by using 3rd party extensionsUsing Raft consensus algorithm to ensure data replication with strong consistency among multiple replicas.
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnonoyes infowith TiSpark Connector
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyImmediate ConsistencyImmediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyesyesyes infofull support since version 6.6
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACIDACIDACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yesnono
User concepts infoAccess controlfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardFine grained access rights according to SQL-standard
More information provided by the system vendor
Microsoft SQL ServerPostgreSQLTiDB
Specific characteristicsTiDB is an open-source NewSQL database built by PingCAP. TiDB supports Hybrid Transactional...
» more
Competitive advantagesIn the current database landscape, infrastructure engineers often have to use one...
» more
Typical application scenariosTiDB is designed to support both OLTP and OLAP scenarios. You can use TiDB , the...
» more
Key customersShopee (E-commerce) BookMyShow.com (E-commerce) Yiguo.com (E-commerce) JD Cloud &...
» more
Market metrics25K+ GitHub Stars for TiDB, and 8K+ GitHub Stars for TiKV 1.6K+ members in TiDB Community...
» more
Licensing and pricing modelsOpen Source Apache 2.0 with either commercial licensing or fully-hosted DB-as-a-service...
» more

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

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More resources
Microsoft SQL ServerPostgreSQLTiDB
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PGCon 2023, PostgreSQL Conference for Users and Developers
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