DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Snowflake vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Snowflake vs. TimescaleDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

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

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	0.49
Rank	#259	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#120	Relational DBMS

Score	78.40
Rank	#15	Overall
	#10	Relational DBMS

Score	123.20
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	4.87
Rank	#74	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

alasql.org

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

www.snowflake.com

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

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

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Timescale

Initial release

2014

2010

2014

2017

Current release

V12

2.13.0, November 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex 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

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Transact SQL

user defined functions

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

yes

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes, with always 3 replicas available

yes

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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