DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Apache Impala vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Apache Impala vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SQLite

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

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

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

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	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

impala.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

firebase.google.com/docs/database

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

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2014

2013

2012

2019

2000

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

cloud service with continuous releases

3.46.0 (23 May 2024), May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

Open Source

Public Domain

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++

Server operating systems

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

Linux

hosted

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

dynamic column types

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

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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.

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

JDBC
ODBC

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

selectable replication factor

yes

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

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

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

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

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, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Azure Active Directory Authentication

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