Oracle Database vs SQL Server vs Teradata comparison

Oracle Database is a top-ranking multi-model database management system by Oracle Corporation. Through Oracle database services and products, clients receive cost-optimized and high-performing versions of Oracle Database, as well as in-memory, NoSQL, and MySQL databases. The solution is available by several service providers on premises, in the cloud, or as a hybrid installation. It can be run on vendor servers as well as on Oracle hardware, including Exadata on-premise, Oracle Cloud, or Cloud at Customer.

Users can select from various types of Oracle Database solutions, depending on what they aim to do with this product. Based on their specific needs, they can choose among options that include:

• Autonomously managed Oracle databases: This type of database eliminates the complexity of operating and securing Oracle Database, while simultaneously ensuring high levels of performance, scalability, and availability for users.
  
  
• Oracle Database on Exadata: Users who seek particularly fast platforms can select this type of running solution. Exadata is a computing platform that is optimized for running Oracle Databases and it serves as the fastest platform for Oracle Database.
  
  
• Oracle Database on-premises deployment: The product allows for deployment on-premises for clients who have data residency and network latency concerns. This option also offers customers the benefit of updated Oracle Cloud technology, including Exadata and Autonomous Database.
  
  
• Oracle Database in the cloud: Organizations can use a specific version of this tool in the cloud, benefiting from complete control over the versions they run and when these versions change.

Part of this product is a fully automated database service called Oracle Autonomous Database, which facilitates the development and deployment of application workloads for organizations. It is built on Oracle Database as well as on Oracle Exadata. This service supports various data types and simplifies application development and deployment from modeling and coding to extract, transform, load process (ETL), data analysis, and database optimization. The service achieves high results in:

• Performance
• Availability
• Security for online transaction processing (OLTP)
• Analytics
• Batch
• Internet of Things (IoT) workloads

Oracle Database Features

Oracle Database has various features which users can utilize in their work with the solution. Among these features are the following:

• Backup and recovery: Oracle Database ensures the integrity of users' data in system failure situations. This feature utilizes a tool named Recovery Manager (RMAN), which allows administrators to perform cold, hot, and incremental database backups, as well as point-in-time recoveries.
  
  
• Clustering: This feature enables high availability of systems in order to run without interruption of services on occasions when one or more servers in a cluster fail. Included is a tool called Oracle Real Application Clusters.
  
  
• Data dictionary: Through this set of internal tables and views, Oracle Database can be administered more efficiently.
  
  
• Logical data structure: Through its feature for logical data structure, Oracle Database stores data in a way that allows users to interact with the database without knowing where the physical storage of the data is located.
  
  
• Memory catching: Through the memory caching architecture feature, users can scale up very large databases and still perform at a considerably high speed.
  
  
• Partitioning: This feature allows users to divide large tables into different pieces and store the pieces across storage devices.

Oracle Database Benefits

Oracle Database offers its users various benefits. Some of these include:

• The solution decreases costs for organizations and provides a high return on investment (ROI) through the multiple services and features it offers.
  
  
• Oracle Database has high-security protection which includes encryption, key management, data masking, and activity monitoring, that secures organizations' data within the tool.
  
  
• The tool offers users the ability to use a single database for all data types, simplifying the process for them.
  
  
• Oracle Database can be deployed in multiple places, including data centers and public and private clouds, which allows great flexibility for users.
  
  
• The product allows applications from different platforms to communicate with the database through its networking stack.
  
  
• Oracle Database is ACID-compliant, which helps maintain data reliability and integrity.

Reviews from Real Users

Paul S., president at Advance Consulting Enterprise, likes Oracle Database because it gets the job done, doesn't fail, and suitable for massively scalable applications.

An Oracle DBA at a computer software company describes Oracle Database as reliable with good performance and very good stability.

SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS) by Microsoft. The product's main purposes are to store data and retrieve it as requested by other software applications - on the same computer or on another computer across a shared network. The solution is built on top of Structured Query Language (SQL), which is a standardized programming language used for relational database management.

The product is tied to Transact-SQL (T-SQL), which is an implementation of SQL from Microsoft that adds several proprietary programming extensions to the standard language. SQL Server is built similarly to other RDBMS products, as its structure is a row-based table that connects related data elements in different tables to one another. One of its most important components is the SQL Server Database Engine, as it controls data processing, storage, and security. Beneath the Database Engine is the SQL Server Operating System, which is used for memory and I/O management, locking data to avoid unneeded upgrades, and job scheduling.

The solution has four editions with different sets of services and tools. They include:

• SQL Server Developer
• SQL Server Expression
• SQL Server Standard 
• SQL Server Enterprise

The first two are available for free and are typically utilized by smaller companies, as they work with fewer functions and storage. The second two editions are generally used by bigger organizations and enterprises and offer more features.

The solution has several functions through which users can facilitate different data-related processes. These include:

• Aggregate functions: These functions are used to calculate one or more values and return a single value.
  
  
• Window functions: Window functions calculate an aggregate value based on a group of rows and return multiple rows for each involved group.
  
  
• Date functions: These functions allow clients to handle data and time data efficiently.
  
  
• String functions: Through the string functions, SQL Server processes an input string and returns a string or numeric value.
  
  
• System functions: The system functions of the product return objects, values, and settings.

SQL Server Services

SQL Server has a wide range of add-on services that provide additional benefits beyond database management. These services include:

• Machine learning: SQL Server machine learning services allow users to do machine learning and data analytics within the product.
   
• Service broker: This feature is a part of the database engine and offers messaging and message queuing for applications on the platform.
  
  
• Replication: This feature consists of transaction replication, merge replication, and snapshot replication. 
  
  
• Analysis: SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) adds online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining capabilities to SQL Server databases.
  
  
• Reporting: This feature supports the development of custom reporting applications.
  
  
• Notifications: This feature generates data-driven notifications which are sent to subscribers of Notification Services.
  
  
• Integration: This SQL Server feature provides capabilities for data integration, data import, and data warehousing.
  
  
• Full-text search: Through this feature, users can utilize specialized indexing and query for unstructured text stored in the solution.
  
  
• Visual studio: This feature supports data programming with SQL Server.
  
  
• Azure Data Studio: This is a cross-platform query editor that can be downloaded and used alongside SQL Server.

SQL Server Benefits

The solution has many benefits for users. These include the following:

• The platform ensures a consistent experience across other platforms while being fast and agile.
  
  
• Through the built-in intelligence features, users can understand their data better.
  
  
• The solution has enterprise-level security, which ensures the smooth and safe performance of users' data.
  
  
• SQL Server offers the ability to retrieve large amounts of data quickly and efficiently.
  
  
• The product installation process is fairly easy, and it offers a user-friendly interface.
  
  
• SQL Server offers improved data storage and retrieval functions through frequent upgrades.
  
  
• The solution reduces the risk of database server attacks, since it is not an open-source database.

Reviews from Real Users

A president at a consultancy evaluates SQL Server as a veteran solution with critical log shipping feature. 

Harkamal S., a user at a manufacturing company, rates SQL Server with a high mark because it is a stable, scalable, and easy-to-deploy solution that pretty much covers everything.

Teradata is a multi-cloud data platform company that provides data warehouse and relational database tools. The brand has an extensive portfolio of big data analytic solutions, integrated marketing applications, and services. The products that Teradata offers can be categorized in the following ways:

• Software: The products in this category include Teradata Vantage, an advanced SQL engine and Teradata database.
  
  
• Cloud: The solutions can work with popular cloud services such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and VMware. Teradata Cloud and customer cloud are also included in this product category.
  
  
• Ecosystem management: The products in this section include IntelliSphere, business continuity manager, data lab, data mover, data stream, QueryGrid, and viewpoint.
  
  
• Hardware: This category includes backup, archive, and restore (BAR) and IntelliFlex.
  
  
• Applications: Master data management (MDM) and Teradata analytics for enterprise applications are the two products in this category.

One of the most popular and commonly used products by Teradata is Teradata Vantage. This is a connected multi-cloud data platform for enterprise analytics. The product unifies data lakes, analytics, and data warehouses, as well as data sources and types. The solution offers its customers scalability, which allows them to scale dimensions to handle massive workloads of data. Teradata Vantage utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to power more models and enhance quality.

Through Vantage Console, businesses can benefit from role-based, no-code software to organize and manage their data. The product offers deployment on many popular public clouds, on premises, and on commodity hardware. Teradata Vantage unifies and integrates all data types from sources and provides companies with a single source of information. It achieves this by supporting all common data types and formats. The product also provides organizations with tools for monitoring, analyzing, and connecting data throughout the organizations.

Part of this product is also VantageCloud, which offers a modern cloud-native architecture as well as hybrid and multi-cloud deployment options. This solution offers new ways for clients to deploy their platforms. These include the next-generation, cloud-native architecture of Teradata VantageCloud Lake.

Teradata Features

The different products that Teradata offers have various features which facilitate data management for customers. Some of the key capabilities of the solutions offered by Teradata include:

• Connectivity: Users can benefit from connections to the mainframe or network-attached systems. The product provides its own extension for interaction with data stored in the tables. It also supports SQL.
  
  
• Linear scalability: Teradata solutions are highly scalable and linear. The solution can handle large volumes of data effectively while also supporting the ability to scale up to 2048 nodes.
  
  
• Load and unload utilities: The product offers features to move data in and out of the product's system effectively.
  
  
• Mature optimizer: Part of this feature is Teradata Optimizer, which is an advanced product that can handle up to 64 joins in a single query.
  
  
• Robust utilities: The solution includes multiple robust utilities in this category of features that facilitate data handling in and out of the product's systems. The tools include MultiLoad, FastLoad, and FastExport.
  
  
• Shared nothing architecture: This set of features, connected to the architecture of Teradata, is known as “shared nothing architecture” because the nodes, processors, and disks all work independently. These capacities ensure better value for a given task.
  
  
• Unlimited parallelism: These features divide large volumes of data into smaller processes that are executed in parallel. This contributes to the execution of complex tasks in a timely manner.

Teradata Benefits

Through its multiple solutions, Teradata offers various benefits for its clients. Some of these include:

• The solution facilitates prototype creation and offers faster times for completion.
  
  
• Through Teradata, users are able to use faster, simpler, and easier solutions for data-related tasks.
  
  
• The product eliminates the need for unnecessary data movement, which contributes to performance improvements.
  
  
• Teradata offers developers the ability to decide where in the architecture different parts of an application run.
  
  
• Teradata allows database administrators to manage databases from a single point of control.
  
  
• The solution provides the option to get the same data on multiple deployment options.
  
  
• The product supports Online Analytical Programming (OLAP) functions, which allows it to perform a complex analytical process of data.
  
  
• Teradata uses the Service Workstation to provide a single operation view for the multi-node system of the product.

Reviews from Real Users

Martin P., a services manager at Bytes Systems Integration, describes Teradata as a product that is very fast with good database control and excellent support.

Blaine V., principal at Insight Data Consulting, rates Teradata highly because of its excellent native features, highly stable, and impressive automation.