DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Amazon CloudSearch vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. CrateDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Amazon CloudSearch vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. CrateDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

A hosted search engine service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

Hosted, scalable database service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

Distributed Database based on Lucene

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Search engine

Document store
Key-value store

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Document store

If a column is of type dynamic docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types/dynamic then it's possible to add arbitrary JSON documents in this cell
Event Store

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

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

Score	0.46
Rank	#260	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#121	Relational DBMS

Score	1.85
Rank	#137	Overall
	#12	Search engines

Score	74.07
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	0.73
Rank	#224	Overall
	#37	Document stores
	#5	Spatial DBMS
	#16	Search engines
	#19	Time Series DBMS
	#8	Vector DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

cratedb.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

cratedb.com/docs

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

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Amazon

Crate

Microsoft

Initial release

2014

2012

2013

2019

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

commercial

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.

CrateDB Cloud: a distributed SQL database that spreads data and processing across an elastic cluster of shared nothing nodes. CrateDB Cloud enables data insights at scale on Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

Implementation language

JavaScript

Java

Server operating systems

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

hosted

All Operating Systems, including Kubernetes with CrateDB Kubernetes Operator support

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free)

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

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

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 search fields are automatically indexed

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to SQL99, but no user access control, stored procedures and host language bindings.

yes, but no triggers and constraints, and PostgreSQL compatibility

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

HTTP API

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Prometheus Remote Read/Write
RESTful HTTP API

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

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.NET
Erlang
Go

community maintained client
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

community maintained client
Perl

community maintained client
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

community maintained client
Scala

community maintained client

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions (Javascript)

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

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

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

yes

automatic partitioning across Amazon Search Instance as required

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

managed transparently by AWS

yes

Configurable replication on table/partition-level

yes

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

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

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

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency
Read-after-write consistency on record level

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

only for local storage and DOM-storage

ACID

ACID across one or more tables within a single AWS account and region

unique row identifiers can be used for implementing an optimistic concurrency control strategy

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

authentication via encrypted signatures

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

rights management via user accounts

Azure Active Directory Authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

The enterprise database for time series, documents, and vectors. Distributed - Native...
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Competitive advantages

Response time in milliseconds: e ven for complex ad-hoc queries. Massive scaling...
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Typical application scenarios

IoT: accelerate your IIoT projects with CrateDB, delivering real-time analytics...
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Key customers

Across all continents, CrateDB is used by companies of all sizes to meet the most...
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Market metrics

The CrateDB open source project was started in 2013 Honorable Mention in 2021 Gartner®...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

See CrateDB pricing >
» more

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