DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Spark SQL

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Spark SQL

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

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

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

Spark SQL is a component on top of 'Spark Core' for structured data processing

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Relational DBMS

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

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	0.51
Rank	#256	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#118	Relational DBMS

Score	74.45
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	76.78
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	18.04
Rank	#33	Overall
	#20	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

spark.apache.org/sql

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

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

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Amazon

Microsoft

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

2014

2012

2019

2010

2014

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

V12

3.5.0 ( 2.13), September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

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

JavaScript

C++

Scala

Server operating systems

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

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

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

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

RESTful HTTP API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Java
Python
R
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Transact SQL

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, utilizing Spark Core

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

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

yes, with always 3 replicas available

none

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

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

ACID

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

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

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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