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IBM solidDB vs SQL Server comparison

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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
39th
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
275
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of IBM solidDB is 1.2%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQL Server is 10.3%, down from 15.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.3%
IBM solidDB1.2%
Other88.5%
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."
"Its security is good. The GUI of SQL Server is also very good."
"The initial setup isn't overly complex."
"It allows for performance tuning to maximize performance."
"Tuning Advisor suggests where to add indexes and from where to remove them. It works like an adviser."
"It is stable, and it works okay."
"I believe Always On is the most valuable feature. It's also easy to use and not very tricky."
"I like the stability of the solution, the fact that you have two, three, four nodes replicating at any given time at different locations, and they're all synchronized; if one is lost it automatically moves to another."
"Microsoft has a very broad landscape of products that they provide—almost everything that you need."
 

Cons

"Data replication and data distribution between multiple nodes definitely have room for improvement here."
"SQL Server is doing well, but I wish the optimization aspects were better."
"CAL licenses should cost less. Microsoft usually prices high for client access licenses. Server plus user client access license (CAL) licensing requires a separate Server license for each server on which the software is installed, plus a user CAL for each user accessing the server."
"With so much data, things can get slow, which is why I would like to be able to understand how to better optimize queries."
"I am fine with the pricing, but pricing is an area that can always be improved."
"It will be very useful to have high-level database monitoring. It should also have built-in business intelligence reporting."
"SQL Server work best with Windows Operating System and it is not compatible with some other systems hence limiting its platform friendliness."
"SQL Server could improve by providing something similar to an interface or dashboard where a developer can do debugging, this would make a developer's work easier. Additionally, the optimization could be better. If there was an interface showing information needed for the optimization it would help because there can be some data loss making it difficult to optimize the SQL Server."
"I would say that people should know how to get a SQL setup in place since it might be an area where they lack when it comes to the solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price of the solution could be cheaper."
"It is annual."
"​It has the easiest licensing."
"This is a very cheap product."
"There is an annual license and it is priced reasonably."
"There is a license required for this solution. One of the problems is for smaller businesses to purchases a license because it is expensive for a lot of them to afford."
"The price could always be lower."
"It is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
36%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business119
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise119
 

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: September 2026.
912,069 professionals have used our research since 2012.