Microsoft SQL Server Alternatives for Self-Hosted

SQLite is a free and open-source relational database management system that implements a small, fast, self-contained, high-reliability, full-featured, SQL database engine. Rather than being a typical client–server database engine, SQLite is self-contained and can be embedded into applications. Making it perfect for development frameworks that want to provide a default database without setup, or applications that needs an embedded database. SQLite is built into all mobile operating systems and most computers and comes bundled with a countless applications. SQLite is also ACID-compliant and implements most of the SQL standard, generally following PostgreSQL syntax.

Apache Cassandra is a free and open-source, distributed, wide column store, NoSQL database management system. Apache Cassandra is designed to handle large amounts of data across many commodity servers, providing high availability with no single point of failure. The database has become the choice of many organizations that need scalability and high availability without compromising performance. Apache Cassandra also provides support for replicating across multiple datacenters, providing lower latency for end users of Cassandra-powered applications.

CouchDB is a free and open-source document-oriented NoSQL database developed by the Apache Foundation. The database is written and implemented in the language Erlang and provides the use of multiple formats and protocols to store, transfer, and process data. With CouchDB you query data with JavaScript using MapReduce, and HTTP for an API. Which can be done across multiple distributed CouchDB instances as the database has the ability to synchronize multiple copies of the same database, across servers.

MemSQL is a free and open-source all-in-one relation database management system. The database lends itself for operational analytics and AI/ML-powered applications that requires fast data ingest, high performance queries and elastic scaling. MemSQL supports ANSI SQL and blended workloads, commonly referred to as translytical, HTAP, HOAP, and ATP workloads. The developer MemSQL Inc, also provides commercially hosted version of the database called MemSQL Helios, a cloud database-as-a-service.

OrientDB is an open-source NoSQL database management system written in Java. The multi-model database supports graph, document, key/value, and object models, where relationships are managed as in graph databases with direct connections between records. The database is extremly efficient and can store over 220,000 records per second on common hardware, and traverse thousands of records in milisecons. OrientDB scales well on multiple machines, thanks to the multi-master replication where there is no single bottleneck on writes like with master-slave replication.

VoltDB is a blazingly fast NewSQL database management system that is specifically designed to run on modern scale-out architectures - fast, inexpensive servers connected via high-speed data networks. VoltDB is a popular choice for companies with high data throughput requirements, like in the telecommunications industry. 5G has changed the game for telcos, and new rules call for a new way of managing data. VoltDB is built for today’s massive data volume and complexity, allowing businesses to survive and thrive in the age of 5G, IoT, and whatever comes next.