Comparing Microsoft Database Offerings

Microsoft’s database landscape includes on-premises products and Microsoft-hosted database services that are part of its Azure family of services.

The main data categories discussed include products and services for transactional data (also called relational and structured data), semi-structured (document-based data often used for mobile applications), and unstructured data (sometimes called Big Data and consisting of high-volume and variety).

The processes discussed in each data category include the following:

Store and manage involves a combination of physically writing and reading data to disks, indexing and querying, data security, and potentially high availability, disaster recovery, and scaling features.

Ingest and integrate includes the automated process of receiving data and combining data into a logical format. Ingestion processes typically receive data from multiple external sources and deliver the data to another service for processing and storage. Integration involves scheduled extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes that combine data from multiple sources and store the data for use by business intelligence (BI), reporting, analysis, and other applications.