Comparing Data Types and Microsoft’s Preferred Technologies

Most organizations have applications that use a variety of data types, from traditional structured data to flexible documents to unstructured data lakes. This variety of data types often results in the need to have multiple database management solutions. Understanding the data types and Microsoft’s preferred technologies for each can help organizations select a solution that best fits their needs and complements their internal skill sets and standards.

Overall

Microsoft’s premier database technology is its SQL Server product, which can store most data types and query all of the data types.

Microsoft has also adopted several open-source database products, primarily to fill in gaps where SQL Server does not provide a solution or because the open source product has become an industry standard. Many of the open source products are from Apache, a long-standing Microsoft partner. This is a logical relationship, as Apache products often use a SQL-based language that has many similarities to Microsoft’s T-SQL language used in SQL Server.