DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. Snowflake vs. SpaceTime vs. TiDB vs. TigerGraph

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. Snowflake vs. SpaceTime vs. TiDB vs. TigerGraph

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

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

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.

A complete, distributed, parallel graph computing platform supporting web-scale data analytics in real-time

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

Document store

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

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#7	Spatial DBMS

Score	4.66
Rank	#70	Overall
	#38	Relational DBMS

Score	1.83
Rank	#139	Overall
	#13	Graph DBMS

Website

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

www.snowflake.com

www.mireo.com/spacetime

pingcap.com

www.tigergraph.com

Technical documentation

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

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable

docs.tigergraph.com

Developer

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Mireo

PingCAP, Inc.

Initial release

1989

2014

2020

2016

2017

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

8.0.0, March 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

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.

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.

TiDB Cloud: Fully-managed TiDB Service. Bring everything great about TiDB to the cloud.

Implementation language

C++

Go, Rust

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

yes

SQL-like query language (GSQL)

APIs and other access methods

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

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP API

GORM
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
SQLAlchemy

GSQL (TigerGraph Query Language)
Kafka
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C#
C++
Python

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

C++
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

user defined functions

yes

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

yes

Fixed-grid hypercubes

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes

Real-time block device replication (DRBD)

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

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

full support since version 6.6

yes

Relationships in graphs

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

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

yes

Fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Role-based access control

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

TiDB is an advanced open-source, distributed SQL database for modern application...
» more

Competitive advantages

- HORIZONTAL SCALING : TiDB grants total transparency into your data workloads without...
» more

Typical application scenarios

TiDB is ideal for transactional applications that require extreme scalability and...
» more

Key customers

Block, Pinterest, Catalyst, Bolt, Flipkart, Capcom, Shopee (E-commerce), JD Cloud...
» more

Market metrics

34K+ GitHub stars 5K+ members in TiDB Community Slack 1K+ community contributors...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

TiDB Community : Free open source software (Apache 2.0) TiDB Self-Hosted : Enterprise...
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.