DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Netezza

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Netezza

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Data warehouse and analytics appliance part of IBM PureSystems

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Relational DBMS

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

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	9.06
Rank	#46	Overall
	#29	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.ibm.com/products/netezza

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

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

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Microsoft

IBM

Initial release

2014

2019

2010

1989

2000

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

V12

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

restricted free version is available

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.

Implementation language

JavaScript

C++

Server operating systems

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

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux

included in appliance

Data scheme

schema-free

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

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

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

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

C
C++
Fortran
Java
Lua
Perl
Python
R

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Transact SQL

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

yes

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

Implicit feature of the cloud service

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

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

yes, with always 3 replicas available

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

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

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

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

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