DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. QuestDB vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. QuestDB vs. Snowflake

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.52
Rank	#109	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

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

questdb.io

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

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

questdb.io/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Microsoft

QuestDB Technology Inc

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

1989

2014

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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++

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL with time-series extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

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

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

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

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

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

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

ACID for single-table writes

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

through memory mapped files

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
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Typical application scenarios

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

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