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

Name

Description

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Widely used open source RDBMS

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

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

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

Document store

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

Score	785.01
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	667.25
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	3.50
Rank	#73	Overall
	#38	Relational DBMS

Website

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

www.postgresql.org

pingcap.com

Technical documentation

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

www.postgresql.org/docs

docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable

Developer

Microsoft

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

PingCAP, Inc.

Initial release

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2016

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

16.4, August 2024

8.2.0, July 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

BSD

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.

PostgreSQL Flex @ STACKIT offers managed PostgreSQL Instances with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed and several extensions available, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

C++

Go, Rust

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

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

Linux

Data scheme

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard with numerous extensions

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

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
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
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

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.

Triggers

yes

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

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

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

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

full support since version 6.6

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

Fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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