DBMS > Alibaba Cloud AnalyticDB for PostgreSQL vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Alibaba Cloud AnalyticDB for PostgreSQL vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Snowflake

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

An online MPP (Massively Parallel Processing) data warehousing service based on Greenplum

Automatically scaling NoSQL Database as a Service (DBaaS) on the Google Cloud Platform

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

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Relational DBMS

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	0.76
Rank	#220	Overall
	#102	Relational DBMS

Score	4.36
Rank	#72	Overall
	#12	Document stores

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

www.alibabacloud.com/product/hybriddb-postgresql

cloud.google.com/datastore

www.ibm.com/products/informix

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/analyticdb-for-postgresql/latest/product-introduction-overview

cloud.google.com/datastore/docs

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

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

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Alibaba / Pivotal Software Inc. / PostgreSQL Global Development Group

Google

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

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2016

2008

1984

2019

2014

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition 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

C, C++ and Java

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

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

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, details here

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

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

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language (GQL)

yes

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
RESTful HTTP/JSON 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

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C
Java
Perl
Python
R

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

using Google App Engine

yes

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Callbacks using the Google Apps Engine

yes

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

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Multi-source replication using Paxos

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

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

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

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on type of query and configuration

Strong Consistency is default for entity lookups and queries within an Entity Group (but can instead be made eventually consistent). Other queries are always eventual consistent.

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

via ReferenceProperties or Ancestor paths

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

Serializable Isolation within Transactions, Read Committed outside of Transactions

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

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

Azure Active Directory Authentication

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

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