Licensing | Enterprise, Workgroup, Express, free Dev/Innovator-C tiers | Enterprise, Standard, CAL model, free Dev/Express | Provides project-based or time-boxed licenses |
Ownership | Owned by SAP SE | Owned and developed by Microsoft Corporation | N/A (no direct impact) |
SQL Language | Uses Transact-SQL (T-SQL) with Sybase-specific extensions to ANSI SQL standard; supports SQLScript structured query language and extensions used by SAP HANA | Uses Transact-SQL (T-SQL), Microsoft's proprietary extension of SQL with procedural capabilities including local variables and various support functions | Converts server-side code: procedures, triggers, functions, batches-handling Sybase constructs (@@rowcount, chained transactions) and refactoring to SQL Server equivalents automatically |
Data Types | Rich set including BSON, JSON, BIGINT, BIGSERIAL, BYTE, CHAR, DATE, DATETIME, DECIMAL, FLOAT, INTEGER, INTERVAL, MONEY, TEXT, VARCHAR, and specialized types | Includes INT, BIGINT, CHAR, VARCHAR, DATETIME, DATETIME2, DECIMAL, FLOAT, MONEY, XML, geography, geometry, and JSON; supports both structured and semi-structured data | Global & Local Data Type Mapping engines remap Sybase types (e.g., TIMESTAMP, UNIVARCHAR) to optimal SQL Server types (DATETIME2, NVARCHAR), customizable per-column or globally |
Indexing Options | B-tree (default), clustered and non-clustered indexes; creates indexes as B-Trees with shorter B-Tree structure for clustered indexes | Clustered and non-clustered indexes, columnstore indexes, XML indexes, spatial indexes, filtered indexes, full-text indexes, and memory-optimized indexes | Re-creates indexes automatically, translating storage attributes; supports filtered indexes and drops Sybase-specific options not supported in SQL Server |