The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of relational database management systems. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up-to-date.

Contents

1 General information 2 Operating system support 3 Fundamental features 4 Tables and views 5 Indexes 6 Other objects 7 Partitioning 8 See also 9 External links

General information

Basic general information about the RDBMSes: creator, company, license, etc.

	Creator	First public release date	Latest stable version	Software license
Adaptive Server Enterprise	Sybase	1987	12.5.3	Proprietary
DB2	IBM	1982	8.2	Proprietary
Firebird	FirebirdSQL Foundation	July 25, 2000	1.5.2	InterBase Public License
Ingres	Berkeley University, Computer Associates	1980	r3 3.0.1	CA-TOSL
InterBase	Borland	1985	7.5	Proprietary
MaxDB	MySQL AB, SAP AG	?	7.5	GPL or proprietary
Microsoft SQL Server	Microsoft	1989	8.00.760 (2000 SP3)	Proprietary
MySQL	MySQL AB	1997	4.1	GPL or proprietary
Oracle	Oracle Corporation	1977	10g Release 1	Proprietary
PostgreSQL	PostgreSQL Global Development Group	June, 1989	8.0.1	BSD license
SQLite	D. Richard Hipp	August 17 2000	3.1.3	Public domain
	Creator	First public release date	Latest stable version	Software license

Operating system support

The operating systems the RDBMSes can run on without emulation.

	Windows	Mac OS X	Linux	BSD	Unix
Adaptive Server Enterprise	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
DB2	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes
Firebird	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ingres	Yes	?	Yes	?	Yes
InterBase	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes (Solaris)
MaxDB	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes
Microsoft SQL Server	Yes	No	No	No	No
MySQL	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Oracle	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
PostgreSQL	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SQLite	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Windows	Mac OS X	Linux	BSD	Unix

Fundamental features

Information about what fundamental RDBMS features are implemented natively.

	ACID	Referential integrity	Transactions	Unicode
Adaptive Server Enterprise	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
DB2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Firebird	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ingres	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
InterBase	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
MaxDB	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Microsoft SQL Server	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
MySQL	Depends 1	Depends 1	Depends 1	Yes
Oracle	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
PostgreSQL	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SQLite	Yes	No 2	Basic 2	Yes
	ACID	Referential integrity	Transactions	Unicode

Note (1): For transactions and referential integrity, the InnoDB table type must be used; the default table type, MyISAM, does not support these features.

Note (2): CHECK and FOREIGN KEY constraints are parsed but are not enforced. Nested transactions are not supported. [1]

Tables and views

Information about what tables and views ³ (other than basic ones) are supported natively.

	Temporary table	Materialized view
Adaptive Server Enterprise	Yes  5	No
DB2	Yes	Yes
Firebird	No	No
Ingres	Yes	No
InterBase	Yes	No
MaxDB	Yes	No
Microsoft SQL Server	Yes	Similar 6
MySQL	Yes	No
Oracle	Yes	Yes
PostgreSQL	Yes	No 4
SQLite	Yes	No
	Temporary table	Materialized view

Note (3): These database objects are available in MySQL 5.0 only, which is an experimental version.

Note (4): Materialized view can be emulated with PL/PgSQL [2].

Note (5): Server provides tempdb, which can be used for public and private (for the session) temp tables. [3]

Note (6): MS SQL server provides indexed views. [4]

Indexes

Information about what indexes (other than basic B-/B+ tree indexes) are supported natively.

	R-/R+ tree	Hash	Expression	Partial	Reverse	Bitmap
Adaptive Server Enterprise	No	No	No	No	Yes	No
DB2	No	?	No	No	No	Yes
Firebird	?	?	No	No	No	No
Ingres	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No
InterBase	?	?	No	No	No	No
MaxDB	?	?	No	No	No	No
Microsoft SQL Server	?	?	No	No	No	No
MySQL	MyISAM tables only	HEAP tables only	No	No	No	No
Oracle	EE edition only	?	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
PostgreSQL	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
SQLite	No	No	No	No	No	No
	R-/R+ tree	Hash	Expression	Partial	Reverse	Bitmap

Other objects

Information about what other objects are supported natively.

	Domain	Cursor	Trigger	Function 5	Procedure 5	External routine 5
Adaptive Server Enterprise	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
DB2	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Firebird	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ingres	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?
InterBase	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
MaxDB	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?
Microsoft SQL Server	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
MySQL	No	No 3	No 3	No 3	No 3	Yes
Oracle	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	?
PostgreSQL	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
SQLite	No	No	Yes	No	No	Yes
	Domain	Cursor	Trigger	Function	Procedure	External routine

Note (5): Both function and procedure refer to internal routines written in SQL and/or procedural language like PL/SQL. External routine refers to the one written in the host languages, such as C, Java, Cobol, etc. "Stored procedure" is a commonly used term for these routine types. However, its definition varies between different database vendors.

Partitioning

Information about what partitioning methods are supported natively.

	Range	Hash	Composite (Range+Hash)	List
Adaptive Server Enterprise	No	Yes	No	No
DB2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Firebird	No	No	No	No
Ingres	Yes	Yes	?	Yes
InterBase	No	No	No	No
MaxDB	?	?	?	?
Microsoft SQL Server	Yes	No	No	No
MySQL	No	No	No	No
Oracle	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
PostgreSQL	No	No	No	No
SQLite	No	No	No	No
	Range	Hash	Composite (Range+Hash)	List

See also

• List of relational database management systems

External links

• Comparison of different SQL implementations
• Comparison of geometrical data handling in PostgreSQL, MySQL and DB2
• Open Source Database Software Comparison
• PostgreSQL vs. MySQL vs. Commercial Databases: It's All About What You Need