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IBM solidDB vs SQL Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM solidDB
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
34th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SQL Server
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of IBM solidDB is 1.0%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQL Server is 10.7%, down from 17.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.7%
IBM solidDB1.0%
Other88.3%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

it_user722241 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
​No other solution came close to this product's speed and tech support is on a really high level
If you need local DB cache with extreme speed, then go for it, if you need something to work as a distributed cloud database, then solidDB would not be the right decision. With our Telco experience, we help with suggestions for new features and improvements of existing ones for new versions of solidDB. Also, in our labs, we do some pre-alpha testing to help them to complete some new features in the right way.
Peter Larsson - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Warehouse Lead at Resurs Bank AB (publ.)
Ledger and seamless integrations have strengthened trusted analytics and unified workloads
SQL Server's high availability and disaster recovery features work for supporting mission-critical applications, but there is much more to wish for. These features are not quite ready yet, although they do function. However, they could be significantly better. High availability and disaster recovery features should be improved in the next releases. I have noticed that everything could be improved or enhanced in the future, particularly temporal tables and window functions. Sometimes, I believe Microsoft releases features to stay ahead of competitors, but they do not make them feature-rich or feature-complete. They release something to be ahead of leaders and then seem to forget to maintain and upgrade them. I want Microsoft to pay more attention and be more mindful about the things they implement. It is fine to do a first release that works, but you cannot simply abandon it in the following years without service packs and improvements. You must continue to build on features rather than forgetting about them.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Memory cache DB and carrier grade high availability, best fit to Telco demands."
"We used SQL Server to store all of our lab data on the database, with a front-end application that needed SQL in the background for archiving all the laboratory data."
"We found it to be quite scalable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution, compared to other RDBMS solutions, such as Oracle MySQL or IBM DB2, it is more user-friendly and has backward compatibility. For example, if you have an application that requires an old version of SQL Server and you have the latest version of the license, you are able to install and use it in backward compatibility mode. They keep supporting the existing legacy application."
"It has enhanced our real time decision making capabilities."
"It is easy to deploy and easy to maintain."
"SQL Server stands out due to its robust parallel processing capabilities."
"It is easy to manage for the administrator. It is also easy to use for applications that are Windows-based. It is a very stable product, and it has got backup and recovery tools."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is that it's integrated with the Visual Studio and also with Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. It's a tool they have and it's quite easy to use and understand. It's the interface for programming for SQL Services."
 

Cons

"Data replication and data distribution between multiple nodes definitely have room for improvement here."
"We have had problems implementing a data warehouse using SQL Server."
"We are the largest micro-credit finance company with more than thirty companies internally. We have 25,000 employees using the business application and SQL does not scale to our requirements."
"Query optimitzer could be simplified."
"I would like to see more integration with other products and it needs to be more secure."
"On the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) side, I have noticed more bugs in terms of being able to connect to our SQL servers. I can't tell how many times my recent server list got dropped or cleaned out. It is a pain, and it would be nice to have that recent connect list when you connect in. For whatever reason, once in a while, I get a hard error, and it'll close. When I go back in, everything is cleared out. It is annoying when you are working with more than a hundred database instances."
"If SQL Server could perhaps run on Linux, that would be good."
"The licensing costs are very high."
"In some cases it is quite difficult, like the lack of ease of the replication and other issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The licensing is on an annual basis."
"SQL Server is expensive if you use the advanced SQL version, but if you use the standard version, it's not expensive."
"It is expensive."
"We're looking at alternative solutions because we think Microsoft's licensing costs have been expensive."
"The price of SQL Server could be better in the African market. The licensing model needs to be improved, it is confusing."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"There is an annual license and it is priced reasonably."
"There is a subscription that needs to be purchased to use the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
40%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
4%
Comms Service Provider
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business119
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise118
 

Questions from the Community

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Would you say the price of SQL Server is high compared to that of similar products?
SQL Server is fairly priced because it has various editions, depending on the number of users, servers, or core packs you are using. If you compare the product to others in this category, the price...
Has using SQL Server helped your organization in any way?
SQL Server has helped my organization through partitioning to distribute the workload, as it splits them up into smaller pieces so the machines can easily deal with it. However, this comes with a h...
Which authentication mode is best for SQL Server?
My company connects through SQL Server authentication. We have company Windows accounts, but we do not want to connect the two, out of security concerns and to keep things separated for our own pur...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

solidDB
Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Iskratel
Microsoft SQL Server is used by businesses in every industry, including Great Western Bank, Aviva, the Volvo Car Corporation, BMW, Samsung, Principality Building Society, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and others in Relational Databases Tools. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.