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Azure Synapse Analytics VS Microsoft SQL

Compare Azure Synapse Analytics VS Microsoft SQL and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Azure Synapse Analytics logo Azure Synapse Analytics

Get started with Azure SQL Data Warehouse for an enterprise-class SQL Server experience. Cloud data warehouses offer flexibility, scalability, and big data insights.

Microsoft SQL logo Microsoft SQL

Microsoft SQL is a best in class relational database management software that facilitates the database server to provide you a primary function to store and retrieve data.
  • Azure Synapse Analytics Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-23
  • Microsoft SQL Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-26

Azure Synapse Analytics features and specs

  • Integration
    Azure Synapse Analytics integrates with other Azure services like Azure Data Lake Storage, Power BI, and Azure Machine Learning, enabling seamless data movement and business intelligence processes.
  • Scalability
    It allows on-demand scalability, both horizontally and vertically, providing the flexibility to handle workloads of any size efficiently.
  • Unified Experience
    Offers a unified interface for data ingestion, preparation, management, and serving, simplifying data operations and reducing the need for multiple tools.
  • Advanced Security
    Includes robust security features like encryption, network protection, and advanced threat protection to ensure data security and compliance.
  • Serverless and Dedicated Options
    Provides both serverless and dedicated resource models, allowing businesses to optimize their costs by selecting the appropriate compute resources for their needs.

Possible disadvantages of Azure Synapse Analytics

  • Complexity
    The comprehensive range of features and tools can lead to a steep learning curve and complexity in setup and management for new users.
  • Cost Management
    Although flexibility is offered, managing and predicting costs can be challenging, especially in serverless scenarios where usage might fluctuate.
  • Resource Limitations
    Despite its scalability, there might be certain limitations in terms of data size or query complexity compared to some on-premises solutions.
  • Dependency on Internet Connectivity
    As a cloud-based solution, it requires stable and reliable internet connectivity, which may not be available in all regions or circumstances.
  • Integration Learning Curve
    While integration is a strength, mastering the integration with various Azure services and third-party tools can require substantial time and effort.

Microsoft SQL features and specs

  • Comprehensive Feature Set
    SQL Server offers a wide range of features including advanced analytics, in-memory capabilities, robust security measures, and integration services.
  • High Performance
    With in-memory OLTP and support for persistent memory technologies, SQL Server provides high transaction and query performance.
  • Scalability
    SQL Server can scale from small installations on single machines to large, data-intensive applications requiring high throughput and storage.
  • Security
    SQL Server offers advanced security features like encryption, dynamic data masking, and advanced threat protection, ensuring data safety and compliance.
  • Integrations
    It easily integrates with other Microsoft products such as Azure, Power BI, and Active Directory, providing a cohesive ecosystem for enterprise solutions.
  • Developer Friendly
    It supports a wide range of development tools and languages including .NET, Python, Java, and more, making it highly versatile for developers.
  • High Availability
    Features like Always On availability groups and failover clustering provide high availability and disaster recovery options for critical applications.

Possible disadvantages of Microsoft SQL

  • Cost
    SQL Server can be expensive, particularly for the Enterprise edition. Licensing costs can add up quickly depending on the features and scale required.
  • Complexity
    Due to its comprehensive feature set, SQL Server can be complex to configure and manage, requiring skilled administrators and developers.
  • Resource Intensive
    SQL Server can be resource-intensive, requiring substantial hardware resources for optimal performance, which can increase overall operational costs.
  • Windows-Centric
    While SQL Server can run on Linux, it is primarily optimized for and tightly integrated with the Windows ecosystem, which may not suit all organizations.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Being a proprietary solution, it can cause vendor lock-in, making it challenging to switch to alternative database systems without significant migration efforts.

Azure Synapse Analytics videos

Azure Synapse Analytics - Next-gen Azure SQL Data Warehouse

More videos:

  • Review - Is Azure SQL Data Warehouse the Right SQL Platform for You?

Microsoft SQL videos

3.1 Microsoft SQL Server Review

More videos:

  • Review - What is Microsoft SQL Server?
  • Review - Querying Microsoft SQL Server (T-SQL) | Udemy Instructor, Phillip Burton [bestseller]

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Azure Synapse Analytics and Microsoft SQL)
Office & Productivity
100 100%
0% 0
Databases
0 0%
100% 100
Development
100 100%
0% 0
Relational Databases
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Azure Synapse Analytics and Microsoft SQL

Azure Synapse Analytics Reviews

Data Warehouse Tools
Azure Synapse Analytics (formerly Azure Data Warehouse) is a cloud-native data warehouse integrated with other Azure services. It unifies data warehousing and big data analytics for comprehensive insights, offering visually interactive tools for user-friendly data exploration.
Source: peliqan.io
Top 6 Cloud Data Warehouses in 2023
Azure Synapse analytics is scalable for large data tables based on its distributed computing. It relies on the MPP (mentioned in the beginning, revisit if you did not grasp it) to quickly run high volumes of complex queries across multiple nodes. With Synapse, there’s an extra emphasis on security and privacy.
Source: geekflare.com
Top 5 BigQuery Alternatives: A Challenge of Complexity
Azure SQL Data Warehouse, now subsumed by Azure Synapse Analytics, brings together the worlds of big data analytics and enterprise data warehousing. Over the years, Azure has made a name for enabling the seamless transfer of data between on-premise and cloud ecosystems.
Source: blog.panoply.io

Microsoft SQL Reviews

We have no reviews of Microsoft SQL yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Azure Synapse Analytics seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 4 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Azure Synapse Analytics mentions (4)

  • DbVisualizer 24.2: A Complete Review
    Azure Synapse Analytics: DbVisualizer now has extended support for dedicated and serverless SQL pools in Azure Synapse Analytics. That includes support for database-scoped credentials, external file formats and data sources, and external tables. For more information, see the Azure Synapse Dedicated and Azure Synapse Serverless pages on the official site. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Deploying a Data Warehouse with Pulumi and Amazon Redshift
    A data warehouse is a specialized database that's purpose built for gathering and analyzing data. Unlike general-purpose databases like MySQL or PostgreSQL, which are designed to meet the real-time performance and transactional needs of applications, a data warehouse is designed to collect and process the data produced by those applications, collectively and over time, to help you gain insight from it. Examples of... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • [WSJ] Facebook Parent Meta Expected to Post Slowest Revenue Growth Since IPO
    You don't run into these kinds of problems with other tools, like the ones I mentioned. I've never tried the Azure ones, but my gut says they may have some scaling issues (synapse analytics looks promising but I have no experience with it). Source: about 3 years ago
  • The Difference Between Data Warehouses, Data Lakes, and Data Lakehouses.
    Popular managed cloud data warehouse solutions include Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure SQL Database, and Amazon Redshift. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago

Microsoft SQL mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Microsoft SQL yet. Tracking of Microsoft SQL recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Azure Synapse Analytics and Microsoft SQL, you can also consider the following products

Saturn Cloud - ML in the cloud. Loved by Data Scientists, Control for IT. Advance your business's ML capabilities through the entire experiment tracking lifecycle. Available on multiple clouds: AWS, Azure, GCP, and OCI.

MySQL - The world's most popular open source database

Amazon SageMaker - Amazon SageMaker provides every developer and data scientist with the ability to build, train, and deploy machine learning models quickly.

PostgreSQL - PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system.

Google BigQuery - A fully managed data warehouse for large-scale data analytics.

SQLite - SQLite Home Page