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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
6.5
Number of Reviews
276
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of IBM solidDB is 1.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQL Server is 10.2%, down from 14.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.2%
IBM solidDB1.4%
Other88.4%
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.
Shakti Gupta - PeerSpot reviewer
SQL server database administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Hybrid data platform has strengthened performance, security, and incident response for production
SQL Server is very mature, but I see areas for improvement, especially in performance tuning, troubleshooting, and automation. Although tools such as Query Store and dynamic management views are powerful, some troubleshooting tasks still require senior SQL Server database administrator expertise. It would be valuable to have more intelligent, built-in recommendations for root cause analysis, indexing, blocking, and query optimization. I would also like to see simplified and consistent management across on-premises SQL Server and Azure SQL services, as managing hybrid environments sometimes requires different tools and approaches. Finally, improved patching, updates, monitoring, and cost and license transparency could make SQL Server easier to manage at the enterprise scale. One area I would improve in SQL Server is its documentation and troubleshooting guidance. SQL Server documentation is comprehensive, but for complex production issues, I would like to see more real-world troubleshooting examples, especially for scenarios such as Always On synchronization issues, blocking and deadlocks, performance degradation, and upgrade features.

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."
"The pricing of the solution is okay. It's less expensive than Oracle, for example."
"The analytics are pretty good."
"SQL Server is quite stable. And now we are using the Lattice 2017 version."
"The solution is very common. It's easy to use."
"A big advantage is the ability to store any type of data in SQL Server."
"Overall, we've had a positive experience with the solution."
"Agent service is a good feature of SQL Server, where you can schedule certain tasks."
"The backup and recovery allow us to easily access previous 10 to 15 years of data, which is only possible using SQL Server due to its uniqueness in handling large data sets."
 

Cons

"Data replication and data distribution between multiple nodes definitely have room for improvement here."
"Performance could be better. But I don't know if it's a problem with my application or with my database."
"The pricing of the product could be better."
"I would like to see better integration between their link server and other platforms, such as IBM, due to the fact that, a lot of times, you want to set up a linked server so you can be on SQL and pull data off of another server using that link server."
"The solution could have additional security."
"Their support could be better. There should be more visibility on the progress of the ticket, and their last line of support should be more knowledgeable. Other than that, we have nothing to complain about."
"The number of concurrent users is too limited and other databases are better than SQL in this regard."
"In terms of exceptionally large databases, it doesn't scale as well as Oracle."
"They do not offer the SQL Server Management tool via the installation. It is a separate tool I use when I'm trying to configure the mirroring with SQL Server Mirroring. This is not supported and I'm getting some errors on the database mirroring."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It requires the purchase of a license."
"I rate the product’s pricing a six out of ten."
"​It has the easiest licensing."
"​We are a Microsoft shop, so we use Active Directory. That integrates well with this product, but we did look at Oracle. We also looked at IBM. This was the best price point for us for what we were getting.​"
"It is expensive, especially when you have open-source products that are just about as functional and they're free. They might want to consider re-evaluating their pricing. We purchased it in retail. It was somewhere in the neighborhood of 9,000. There is just the standard licensing fee. If they migrate this product the way they're trying to do everything else, eventually, it is going to be subscription-based, which is going to suck, but that's the way the industry is going, so it is what it is."
"With recent releases, the Standard Edition (cheaper) SKU has some of the earlier version Enterprise features. SQL Express has some limitations."
"The price for the Standard Edition is approximately $3,000 USD per core. Once you include technical support, SQL Server is cheaper than PostgreSQL and MySQL."
"We're looking at alternative solutions because we think Microsoft's licensing costs have been expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
34%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business119
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise122
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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: October 2026.
920,336 professionals have used our research since 2012.