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Infobright DB vs SQL Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

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

Infobright DB
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
36th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (19th)
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) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Infobright DB is 1.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQL Server is 10.4%, down from 16.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.4%
Infobright DB1.4%
Other88.2%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user104457 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Apr 14, 2014
 

Featured Reviews

it_user708987 - PeerSpot reviewer
MySQL DBA at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Excellent reporting server that is compatible with MySQL
We ran into some quirks that Infobright had. We interacted with Infobright's support and were able to resolve them. There still are issues with data replication - Infobright is currently for one server (unless you buy the Infobright appliance). This would mean that redundancy is something you need to implement yourself.
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

"A valuable feature was the use of a columnar database for large, ever-growing, big datasets."
"It is very straightforward and easy to work with."
"The high compression and the relatively fast load for a free product."
"We now have multiple times faster queries in comparison to MS SQL."
"Infobright allowed us to reduce the number of moving parts and complexity that we had while providing good performance to produce our reports."
"Infobright gave us the ability to avoid significant changes in our data structure and just use Infobright like BigDataMySql."
"The performance of ad hoc aggregation queries is superior to any RDBMS that I have used and I have used them all."
"ICE helped us improve the speed for the “group-by” query by 10x."
"One of the most valuable features of SQL Server is that it's easy to use."
"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."
"I have complete warehouse logic inside stored procedure and it works like a charm."
"The main feature of this solution is ease of use."
"The solution has proven to be very flexible, the product is quite stable, overall we've found it to be extremely easy to use, the initial setup is pretty straightforward, it's not difficult to implement and the deployment doesn't take too long, and technical support has been pretty good so far and they are helpful."
"It's great that the database engine is always on."
"Tuning Advisor suggests where to add indexes and from where to remove them. It works like an adviser."
"The Always On tool improves the SQL server availability."
 

Cons

"When running a complex subquery, the system hangs without giving the user any response."
"MPP, distributed processing!!! And better integration with Hadoop."
"Only the data from the columns that reached 2GB will actually decrease. Other columns below 2GB in size do not leave the disk."
"There still are issues with data replication - Infobright is currently for one server (unless you buy the Infobright appliance)."
"After all the re-work to our product to remove as much reliance on Infobright, and the extra hardware costs we had to absorb, there was definitely a negative return on investment."
"On the contrary, we have switched back to the MS SSAS Tabular Model, because of pricing policy."
"There was no scalability at all. Infobright didn't permit any changes in tables."
"We didn’t purchase the Enterprise Edition because it was too expensive for a product that wasn’t going to replace our main DWH database (Oracle), but was, somehow, only an addition for it."
"There are a lot of improvements in the cloud space about which we open a case with Microsoft every now and then. These improvements are not in terms of features or functionality. They are more related to their own compatibility or connectivity on which they keep on working to improve the product."
"Indexing, execution plans, and the SQL Server Management Studio performance."
"Occasionally the performance, as good as it is, is a bit off. We sometimes experience memory spiking. If they could maybe fix that aspect of the solution, that would be quite helpful for our organization."
"The performance could improve."
"The performance is not always the best."
"The enterprise-level license agreement is very complicated."
"SQL could be improved by making all features available on the on-premise version of the product as well as the cloud version. When you buy the on-premise version, it's sort of an inferior product compared to the cloud version, which seems to get most of the latest and greatest features."
"The security features of the solution could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our pricing was based on server instances and it was actually very cheap compared to Oracle. I guess you get what you pay for."
"We pay approximately $12,000 USD per month for both the server and the license."
"The areas that need improvement are with regards to the commercial aspect of the solution, the licensing cost could be reduced in order to help customers to adopt it."
"The pricing from Microsoft is quite expensive compared to Oracle."
"We pay per second of usage, but there are different offerings of the license."
"This solution is available at a much lower price point than Oracle."
"It is annual."
"SQL Server's pricing has proven satisfactory for our market range."
"There is a license required for this solution."
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Answers from the Community

it_user104457 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Apr 14, 2014
Apr 14, 2014
Would be happy to discuss and help. I am only aware of InfoBright from what has been written publicly, however, MS SQL (and associated tools) I've used rather extensively.
2 out of 8 answers
it_user73359 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Apr 10, 2014
Hi Pankaj, do I know you and from where?
it_user95526 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works with 10,001+ employees
Apr 10, 2014
Sorry but my skills are in the SAP space ..SQL server 2005 seems a very old version to compare to anything? Regards, Roger Loe Technology Principal Consultant SAP South Africa, 4 Waterford Place | Century City | Cape Town 7441 | South Africa
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
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...
 

Also Known As

Infobright
Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

REZ-1, SonicWALL, IntegriChain, Fuseforward International Inc., Polystar, Live Rail, Mavenir Systems, JDSU Partners, Bango
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 Infobright DB vs. SQL Server and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.