DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Apache Druid vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. RocksDB

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Apache Druid vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. RocksDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Open-source analytics data store designed for sub-second OLAP queries on high dimensionality and high cardinality data

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

Embeddable persistent key-value store optimized for fast storage (flash and RAM)

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Key-value store

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

Score	3.25
Rank	#90	Overall
	#47	Relational DBMS
	#7	Time Series DBMS

Score	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	3.41
Rank	#86	Overall
	#11	Key-value stores

Website

alasql.org

druid.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

rocksdb.org

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

druid.apache.org/docs/latest/design

firebase.google.com/docs/database

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

github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Apache Software Foundation and contributors

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

Facebook, Inc.

Initial release

2014

2012

2019

2013

Current release

29.0.1, April 2024

cloud service with continuous releases

9.2.1, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

Apache license v2

commercial

Open Source

BSD

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

JavaScript

Java

C++

Server operating systems

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

Linux
OS X
Unix

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-less columns are supported

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

schema-free

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 fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL for querying

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

C++ API
Java API

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

Clojure
JavaScript
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

C
C++
Go
Java
Perl
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Triggers

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

manual/auto, time-based

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes, via HDFS, S3 or other storage engines

yes

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

yes

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

none

Immediate Consistency

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

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

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

RBAC using LDAP or Druid internals for users and groups for read/write by datasource and system

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Azure Active Directory Authentication

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