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

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

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

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

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things 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

Document store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	3.65
Rank	#85	Overall
	#11	Key-value stores

Website

alasql.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.ibm.com/products/informix

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

rocksdb.org

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

firebase.google.com/docs/database

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

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

github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Google

acquired by Google 2014

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Microsoft

Facebook, Inc.

Initial release

2014

2012

1984

2019

2013

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

cloud service with continuous releases

9.2.1, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Open Source

BSD

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, C++ and Java

C++

Server operating systems

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

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

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

C++ API
Java API

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

.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

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

Implicit feature of the cloud service

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency

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

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

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

Azure Active Directory Authentication

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