DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Cassandra vs. Hive vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Cassandra vs. Hive vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

data warehouse software for querying and managing large distributed datasets, built on Hadoop

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	61.17
Rank	#18	Overall
	#12	Relational DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	4.25
Rank	#79	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

cassandra.apache.org

hive.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/Hive/Home

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

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Apache Software Foundation

initially developed by Facebook

Microsoft

SAP

formerly Sybase

Initial release

2014

2008

2012

2019

1992

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

3.1.3, April 2022

cloud service with continuous releases

17, July 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache Version 2

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.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

JavaScript

Java

Server operating systems

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

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

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 SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

JDBC
ODBC
Thrift

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

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C++
Java
PHP
Python

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

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

Triggers

yes

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

selectable replication factor

yes

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

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

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
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

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 can be defined per object

Access rights for users, groups and roles

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Market metrics

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