SQL Server vs MySQL vs Postgresql: Which One Is the Best

In addition, the auditing option allows you to review users’ and groups’ data access activities in your database, which provides a layer of extra security. Relational Database Management System allows https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ users to work with back-end data using a variety of commands such as creates, updates, deletes, and reads. This is because when developers build software projects, they often use an RDBMS.

  • If something goes wrong, developers can always go back to the previous version.
  • Overall, the functionality for JSON files in MySQL is very limited, and developers mostly prefer using classical strings.
  • SQL Server has a less developed multi-version concurrency control system and depends on locking of data to avoid errors from simultaneous transactions, by default.
  • If the goal is to save CPU and storage space, developers can put strict benchmarks on their buffer pool.
  • There is no licensing and upgrading cost for PostgreSQL – except the operational costs that include the salaries of your in-house database administrators and developers.
  • The MVCC characteristic of PostgreSQL ensures a lesser chance of deadlock, only blocking if two queries try to modify the same row at the same time and serialize the updates made to that row.

It has a single ACID-compliant storage engine and initializes a new system process with its memory allocation for each client connection. Hence, with the increase of client connections on systems, more memory needs to be allocated. It offers multi-version concurrency control (MVCC), allowing multiple transactions to be processed simultaneously, with fewer deadlocks than SQL Server. PostgreSQL offers many tools and parameters that allow users to monitor and optimize database performance.

What are the replication differences between PostgreSQL and SQL Server? Compare replication in PostgreSQL vs. MSSQL

PostgreSQL supports object-oriented programming features, including the use of inheritance. PostgreSQL follows the transaction along with the ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability) properties. It supports various operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Mac OS X, LINUX, and so on. PostgreSQL is better suited for enterprise-level applications with frequent write operations and complex queries.

Both PostgreSQL and SQL Server provide support for temporary tables since it allows you to store intermediate results from branched complex logic and complex procedures. Temporary tables can help improve database organization and performance by isolating intermediary information from the essential as well. If you want to better understand how the systems cache and process requests, PostgreSQL isolates processes by treating them as separate OS processes. This makes monitoring and management very easy, but at the same time, it makes scaling multiple databases more difficult. SQL Server has managed to make a mark as a database management system with its wide range of applications and tools that simplify working with data.

PostgreSQL Vs SQL Server: Performance

T-SQL includes additional support for data and string processing, procedural programming, and local variables. Now that we have an idea about the salient aspects of SQL Server and PostgreSQL, let’s dig into the differences between the two. You can use the factors mentioned below to identify which database management system suits your needs best. In 1985, he began working on Postgres, an evolved version of Ingres with complete data type support and relationships. The development team later incorporated SQL support in the project, and in 1996, Postgres became PostgreSQL. We hope that this EDUCBA information on “sql server vs postgresql” was beneficial to you.
In conclusion, it must be acknowledged that both servers are quite efficient, and will be found useful by developers and program users alike. Now that we have established the dissimilarities between the two servers, you can choose the one whose features align with your needs. For any information on PostgreSQL Full Text Search, you can visit the former link. On the other hand, the SQL server accepts both trusted and untrusted operating systems, file systems, and other hardware architecture that comply with the product’s documentation. Little or no technical support will be provided for SQL server software used in unsupported operating systems, file systems, and other hardware platforms.
PostgreSQL leverages serializable snapshot isolation (SSI) to ensure transaction isolation. PostgreSQL provides the PL/pgSQL procedural programming language to its users for simplicity. Additional functionalities to standard SQL in PostgreSQL include user-defined types, custom modules, extensions, JSON support, and extra options for triggers and other functionalities. Michael Stonebraker is an American computer scientist specializing in database systems.
What is the difference between SQL and PostgreSQL
MVCC provides snapshots of database info to avoid showing inconsistencies caused by simultaneous transactions or locking of data that occurs in other database systems. It uses Serializable Snapshot Isolation (SSI) to guarantee transaction isolation. SQL Server offers a range of features and functions to prevent security threats, because each application is unique in its security needs. The SQL Server security framework manages access to securable entities through authentication and authorization. SQL Server has support for a hierarchy of encryption options and supports TLS (transport layer security) for encrypting network traffic.

Data Consistency

These are mainly based on setting ratios of different functionality parameters, such as ratios of data reads to writes, etc. For example, there may be many user accounts in your PostgreSQL database server (i.e. application accounts, end user accounts, admin accounts, developer accounts, etc.). You do not want operators to access tables meant for managers; most businesses make sure that only designated personnel access the end users’ data or confidential/sensitive business information. PostgreSQL allows you to create role-based profiles with a certain set of privileges for each group of users. Thus, you can manage both user groups and individual user roles based on a package of privileges, which will help you ensure access protection.

It typically requires complex infrastructure setup and troubleshooting experience. MySQL, therefore, is the most demanded database on the market, which means finding competent teams, learning resources, reusable libraries, and ready add-ons will be easy. So, if you are choosing between SQL Server vs MySQL in terms of market trends, the latter is a better choice. Note – There is a free version of SQL Server available for students and developers. On one hand, MS SQL Server has a more developed GUI; on the other hand, PostgreSQL is open source. Both have their pros and cons, but the final decision is fully dependent on your particular project and requirements.
There is no cost involved for PostgreSQL’s community-based support or its upgrades to newer versions. There might be hardware/data center upgrade and data migration costs when you upgrade versions; plus, the ongoing operational costs are similar to that of any other standard DBMS. User management (i.e. assigning roles and privileges to individual users) is another common data security feature. In PostgreSQL, you can implement this using role-based access control, which includes user-level privileges as role assignments, table-level privileges via roles, and role inheritance. These are the deep-end security enhancement features of the DBMS. Different databases have different types and levels of data encryption methods, which provide protection against data theft.

The UNIQUE constraint creates a nonclustered index, while the PRIMARY KEY creates a clustered index unless one already exists. While MySQL supports views, PostgreSQL offers advanced view options. For example, you can precompute some values in advance (like the total value of all orders over a given period) to create materialized views. Materialized views improve database performance for complicated queries.
What is the difference between SQL and PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL has established itself as an enterprise-class, advanced open-source database that supports both JSON (non-relational) and SQL (relational) querying. Multiversion concurrency control (MVCC) is an advanced database feature that creates duplicate copies of records to safely read and update the same data in parallel. When you use MVCC, multiple users can read and modify the same data simultaneously without compromising data integrity. On the other hand, SQL Server has often been criticized for its poor user interface. It has complex performance tuning features and no native support for source control.
The Postgresql community offers a lot of tools for software scaling and optimization. You can find add-ons by your industry – take a look at the full list on the official page. The integrations allow developers to perform clustering, integrating AI, collaborating, tracking issues, improving object mapping, and cover many other essential features. Replacing is easier in NoSQL databases because they support horizontal scaling rather than vertical – increasing the number of locations rather than the size of a single one.

postgresql performance solutions


There are some performance optimization limitations in the MS SQL Server Standard Edition, including indexing and memory partitioning, etc. However, these limitations are removed in its Enterprise Edition. SQL Server’s In-Memory OLTP feature ensures high performance by using in-memory data tables instead of writing directly to the disk.

Scroll to Top
Scroll to Top