DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Faircom DB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Faircom DB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

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

Native high-speed multi-model DBMS for relational and key-value store data simultaneously accessible through SQL and NoSQL APIs.

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store

Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Secondary database models

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

Score	0.20
Rank	#318	Overall
	#48	Key-value stores
	#141	Relational DBMS

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.faircom.com/products/faircom-db

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

docs.faircom.com/docs/en/UUID-7446ae34-a1a7-c843-c894-d5322e395184.html

firebase.google.com/docs/database

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

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Amazon

FairCom Corporation

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

Initial release

2014

2012

1979

2012

2019

Current release

V12, November 2020

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

Restricted, free version available

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.

Implementation language

JavaScript

ANSI C, C++

Server operating systems

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

hosted

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
QNX
SCO
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

easily portable to other OSs

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

schema free, schema optional, schema required, partial schema,

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, ANSI SQL Types, JSON, typed binary structures

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 fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes, ANSI SQL with proprietary extensions

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
Direct SQL
JDBC
JPA
ODBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
RESTful MQTT/JSON API
RPC

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
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
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js and browser)
PHP
Python
Visual Basic

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

.Net, JavaScript, C/C++

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

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

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

File partitioning, horizontal partitioning, sharding

Customizable business rules for table partitioning

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

yes, configurable to be parallel or serial, synchronous or asynchronous, uni-directional or bi-directional, ACID-consistent or eventually consistent (with custom conflict resolution).

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
Immediate Consistency
Tunable consistency per server, database, table, and transaction

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

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

tunable from ACID to Eventually Consistent

yes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

Yes, tunable from durable to delayed durability to in-memory

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

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

Fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard with additional protections for files

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Azure Active Directory Authentication

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