ScramDB vs SQL Server
SQL Server can do analytics, in the edition you pay per core for. Columnstore memory is capped at roughly 1.4 GB on Express and 128 GB on Standard, batch-mode parallelism is capped at one on Express and Web and two on Standard, and the uncapped behaviour plus SIMD aggregates arrive only with Enterprise. ScramDB is columnar and parallel across every core in the one edition that exists, and it holds the transactions on that same copy.
Side by side
| ScramDB | SQL Server | |
|---|---|---|
| Analytical execution | Columnar and parallel across every core, in the one edition that exists | Columnstore memory capped below Enterprise; batch-mode parallelism capped at 1 on Express and Web, 2 on Standard |
| Licensing | Community free up to 64 GiB stored. Enterprise for clustering and beyond | Per core, minimum four cores per server, on Standard and Enterprise |
| Free edition ceiling | 64 GiB of stored data, every CPU core you have | Express: 50 GB per database, 4 sockets or 32 cores, 1.4 GB of columnstore memory |
| Concurrency model | Readers never block writers | Lock based by default; row versioning is opt-in via snapshot isolation |
| Wire protocol | PostgreSQL wire protocol, every standard driver and BI tool | TDS, with its own driver stack |
| Branching | Fork the database instantly, or open it as it was at any past timestamp | Backup and restore |
| AI and agents | A semantic layer inside the engine that agents connect to directly, bound by the caller’s own permissions | Native vector type in 2025; the vector index is in public preview |
| Platforms | One static binary on Linux, x86-64 or arm64 | Windows, Linux and containers |
The edition matrix is the product
Everything that makes SQL Server quick at analytics is metered by edition. Express gets columnstore with about 1.4 GB of memory for it and batch-mode parallelism of one. Standard raises the memory and caps parallelism at two. Uncapped columnstore memory, full parallelism and SIMD aggregates arrive with Enterprise, and Enterprise is licensed by the core with a four core minimum.
ScramDB has one engine. Every core of the machine, the whole columnar path, the row-level security and the agent interface, with no feature flag tied to a purchase order.
Readers that never block
SQL Server defaults to lock-based concurrency, so a long reporting query and a busy write path contend until someone enables snapshot isolation and accepts the version store that comes with it. In ScramDB the reporting query sees a consistent picture of the data and never blocks the writes.
When SQL Server is the right answer
A Windows and .NET estate with SSIS, SSRS and Active Directory woven through it, where the tooling and the operational knowledge are worth more than the licence line.
Other head to heads
Same wire protocol, same drivers, same SQL. A columnar engine and native-code execution underneath.
ClickHouse cannot hold your transactions, so it lives next to a real database with a pipeline between them. ScramDB is both.
No columnar storage, no vectorized execution, no parallel query in the community server. Every analytical scan is a row walk.
Run it yourself in one line
One static binary, no dependencies. It picks its own config, listens on the postgres port 5432 and runs in the background.
$curl -fsSL https://scramdb.com/install | bash