DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft Access vs. Milvus vs. OpenSearch

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft Access vs. Milvus vs. OpenSearch

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

High performance Time Series DBMS

Microsoft Access combines a backend RDBMS (JET / ACE Engine) with a GUI frontend for data manipulation and queries.

The Access frontend is often used for accessing other datasources (DBMS, Excel, etc.)

A DBMS designed for efficient storage of vector data and vector similarity searches

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Vector DBMS

Search engine

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Vector 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	7.71
Rank	#49	Overall
	#2	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	101.16
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	2.78
Rank	#103	Overall
	#4	Vector DBMS

Score	16.03
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Website

alasql.org

kx.com

www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/access

milvus.io

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

code.kx.com

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

milvus.io/docs/overview.md

opensearch.org/docs/latest

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Microsoft

Amazon Web Services

Initial release

2014

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

1992

2019

2021

Current release

3.6, May 2018

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

2.4.4, May 2024

2.5.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

free 32-bit version

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Zilliz Cloud – Cloud-native service for Milvus

Aiven for OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.
STACKIT OpenSearch offers OpenSearch in a managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant, for a wide range of applications like analytics, website search, offering scalability and fast data access.

Implementation language

JavaScript

C++

C++, Go

Java

Server operating systems

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

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux
macOS

10.14 or later
Windows

with WSL 2 enabled

All OS with a Java VM

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Vector, Numeric and String

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

table attribute 'grouped'

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like query language (q)

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

RESTful HTTP API

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

C
C#
C++
Go
J
Java
JavaScript
Lua
MatLab
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Scala

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java (JDBC-ODBC)
VBA
Visual Basic.NET

C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Triggers

yes

with views

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Source-replica replication

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

similar paradigm used for internal processing

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Session Consistency
Tunable Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

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

but no files for transaction logging

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

but no files for transaction logging

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

rights management via user accounts

a simple user-level security was built in till version Access 2003

Role based access control and fine grained access rights

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
» more

Milvus is an open-source and cloud-native vector database built for production-ready...
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OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
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Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
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Highly available, versatile, and robust with millisecond latency. Supports batch...
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Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
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Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
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RAG: retrieval augmented generation Video media : video understanding, video deduplication....
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The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
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Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
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Milvus is trusted by thousands of enterprises, including PayPal, eBay, IKEA, LINE,...
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Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
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As of January 2024, 25k+ GitHub stars 10M+ downloads and installations 3k+ enterprise...
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Licensing and pricing models

upon request
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Milvus was released under the open-source Apache License 2.0 in October 2019. Fully-managed...
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The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.