this is the general usage pattern at Microsoft. Billing, Logs, Telemetry events are stored in ADX and the state of an individual entity is defined by the arg_max(timestamps)
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

support for complex search expressions docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/parseoperator FTS, Geospatial docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/geo-point-to-geohash-function distributed search -> ADX acts as a distributed search engine
Time Series DBMS

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer/time-series-analysis

Relational DBMS

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	2.79
Rank	#102	Overall
	#2	Multivalue DBMS

Score	7.57
Rank	#51	Overall
	#32	Relational DBMS

Score	58.10
Rank	#19	Overall
	#13	Relational DBMS

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	2.70
Rank	#105	Overall
	#8	Time Series DBMS

Website

www.softwareag.com/en_corporate/platform/adabas-natural.html

aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora

cloud.google.com/bigquery

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

questdb.io

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/CHAP_Aurora.html

cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer

questdb.io/docs

Developer

Software AG

Amazon

Google

Microsoft

QuestDB Technology Inc

Initial release

1971

2015

2010

2019

2014

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

bool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types

yes

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

yes

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

SQL with time-series extensions

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API

with add-on software Adabas SOA Gateway
SOAP-based API

with add-on software Adabas SOA Gateway

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Microsoft SQL Server communication protocol (MS-TDS)
RESTful HTTP API

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Supported programming languages

Natural

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

.Net
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PowerShell
Python
R

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

yes

user defined functions

in JavaScript

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Triggers

yes

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/management/updatepolicy

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

yes, with additonal products like Adabas Cluster Services, Adabas Parallel Services, Adabas Vista

horizontal partitioning

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Spark connector (open source): github.com/Azure/azure-kusto-spark

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

Since BigQuery is designed for querying data

ACID for single-table writes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

through memory mapped files

User concepts

Access control

only with OS-specific tools (e.g. IBM RACF, CA Top Secret)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access privileges (owner, writer, reader) on dataset, table or view level

Google Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM)

Azure Active Directory Authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

News

QuestDB 8.0: Major Release
23 May 2024

QuestDB and Raspberry Pi 5 benchmark, a pocket-sized powerhouse
8 May 2024

Build your own resource monitor with QuestDB and Grafana
6 May 2024

Does "vpmovzxbd" Scare You? Here's Why it Doesn't Have To
12 April 2024

Create an ADS-B flight radar with QuestDB and a Raspberry Pi
8 April 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.