How to Decide on PostgreSQL over SQL Server

Galaxy Glossary

Why do developers choose PostgreSQL over SQL Server?

Understand the practical, technical, and business reasons teams pick PostgreSQL instead of Microsoft SQL Server.

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Description

Why choose PostgreSQL instead of SQL Server?

PostgreSQL is open-source, license-free, and community-driven, removing vendor lock-in and recurring fees. It ships cross-platform, runs on inexpensive cloud instances, and scales horizontally with features like logical replication and partitioning.

Developers prefer PostgreSQL for rich SQL standards support, JSONB querying, powerful extensions (PostGIS, pgVector), and the ability to write stored procedures in multiple languages (PL/pgSQL, PL/Python, PL/JavaScript).

What productivity features does PostgreSQL add?

RETURNING clauses let you read rows modified by INSERT/UPDATE without a second SELECT. INSERT ... ON CONFLICT offers a one-line UPSERT. Generated columns, lateral joins, and window functions simplify analytics directly in SQL.

How does PostgreSQL handle JSON data?

Native JSONB type stores semi-structured data alongside relational columns. GIN indexes keep JSONB queries fast, eliminating the need for a separate NoSQL store.

Does PostgreSQL scale for ecommerce workloads?

Table partitioning by date or customer sharding, multi-master logical replication, and FDW connectors to other Postgres nodes allow you to grow from single-node to multi-node without license upgrades.

Cost comparison in real numbers

A 4-vCPU cloud VM running Postgres is the only cost you pay. The equivalent SQL Server Standard edition incurs per-core licensing, Software Assurance, and Windows Server fees—often >$3000 per core annually.

When should you still pick SQL Server?

If you rely heavily on SSIS packages, SQL Server Agent, or T-SQL proprietary features like CLR triggers, staying with SQL Server may shorten delivery time. Otherwise, feature parity is close enough to favor Postgres.

Why How to Decide on PostgreSQL over SQL Server is important

How to Decide on PostgreSQL over SQL Server Example Usage


-- Find top customers by spend last 30 days using window functions
WITH recent AS (
  SELECT customer_id, SUM(total_amount) AS spend
  FROM Orders
  WHERE order_date >= CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL '30 days'
  GROUP BY customer_id
)
SELECT c.id, c.name, r.spend,
       RANK() OVER (ORDER BY r.spend DESC) AS rank
FROM Customers c
JOIN recent r ON r.customer_id = c.id
ORDER BY r.spend DESC
LIMIT 10;

How to Decide on PostgreSQL over SQL Server Syntax


-- 1. PostgreSQL RETURNING
INSERT INTO Orders (customer_id, order_date, total_amount)
VALUES (42, CURRENT_DATE, 199.99)
RETURNING id, order_date;

-- 2. PostgreSQL UPSERT
INSERT INTO Products (id, name, price, stock)
VALUES (1, 'Headphones', 99.99, 25)
ON CONFLICT (id) DO UPDATE
SET price  = EXCLUDED.price,
    stock  = Products.stock + EXCLUDED.stock;

-- 3. JSONB filter with GIN index
CREATE INDEX idx_products_attributes ON Products USING GIN (attributes);
SELECT id, name
FROM Products
WHERE attributes @> '{"color":"red"}';

-- 4. Partitioned Orders table
CREATE TABLE Orders_y2024 PARTITION OF Orders
    FOR VALUES FROM ('2024-01-01') TO ('2025-01-01');

Common Mistakes

Assuming SQL Server's MERGE equals Postgres UPSERT. MERGE can cause race conditions; Postgres's INSERT ... ON CONFLICT is atomic. Fix by rewriting MERGE logic to ON CONFLICT during migration.
Copy-pasting T-SQL functions into PL/pgSQL. Proprietary functions like GETDATE() or IDENTITY must be replaced with CURRENT_TIMESTAMP and SERIAL/IDENTITY in Postgres.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is PostgreSQL really free for commercial use?

Yes. PostgreSQL uses the permissive PostgreSQL License—no per-core, per-user, or cloud edition fees.

Can I migrate my SQL Server data without downtime?

Use logical replication: set up Postgres as subscriber, replicate changes while you cut traffic over, and achieve near-zero downtime.

Does PostgreSQL have an equivalent to SQL Server Agent?

Cron-like job schedulers such as pg_cron or pg_timetable run inside Postgres to replace SQL Server Agent jobs.

Want to learn about other SQL terms?

dbt tests

dbt tests are declarative assertions in dbt that automatically validate data quality during model builds.

dbt utils

dbt utils is a community-maintained dbt package that adds time-saving utility macros for analytics engineers, such as generating surrogate keys, safely unioning models, and automating date spines.

dbt Tutorial Glossary: Build, Test & Deploy SQL Models

dbt is an open-source framework that lets data teams transform raw warehouse tables into tested, documented, production-ready datasets using version-controlled SQL.

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