No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

IBM solidDB vs SQL Server comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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 October 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of IBM solidDB is 1.3%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQL Server is 10.3%, down from 15.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.3%
IBM solidDB1.3%
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 solution is very fast, the data is reliable, and I can normalize the database and the data so that I can collect whatever information I need and share whatever report I want."
"SQL Server has scaled as per our requirements."
"It's much more friendly in comparison with Oracle."
"The performance is good and it's very easy to use."
"SQL Server has a dynamic resource allocation feature that allows disk and memory usage to scale to meet changing database demands, providing better performance and simplifying software management."
"The availability is the most valuable feature. It has high availability. It also has good performance."
"The solution is easy to set up."
"We have found there are many useful features such as the solution is continually being upgraded, ETL capabilities for extracting and transformation, and it is very easy to use."
 

Cons

"Data replication and data distribution between multiple nodes definitely have room for improvement here."
"There are scalability limitations and this is why we are evaluating cloud alternatives."
"For each additional core feature you want to add to your DBMS edition, it is more money."
"While this is a reliable product, it has room for improvement."
"Access validation rules and expressions need improvement while converting into SQL Server."
"Version management, editor capabilities, CDC (change date capture), and some advanced analytic functions should be added; continuous integration solutions."
"SQL Server has a tendency to consume all the memory you allow it to. If you are not careful, you can basically break your server."
"The integration could be better. They are not open-source, so the integration with other platforms is not that easy."
"The tool is expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"There is an annual license and it is priced reasonably."
"To scale the solution there are additional costs."
"We have had to purchase the Enterprise version to the tune of a few hundred thousand dollars, which is just ridiculous."
"Depending upon your usage, you can use the pay-as-you-go model for a short period of time. For longer projects, we can opt for one-year or a three-year license."
"I know the SQL Server pricing model, I believe, is based on CPU cores that your database server has, but I don't know what the solution's prices are though."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"We're looking at alternative solutions because we think Microsoft's licensing costs have been expensive."
"The product is expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Relational Databases Tools solutions are best for your needs.
916,771 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
35%
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
Earn 20 points
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.
916,771 professionals have used our research since 2012.