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	1.07
Rank	#186	Overall
	#87	Relational DBMS

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	48.20
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#53	Document stores
	#20	Object oriented DBMS

Website

altibase.com

cassandra.apache.org

www.claris.com/filemaker

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

origodb.com

Technical documentation

github.com/ALTIBASE/Documents/tree/master/Manuals

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

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

origodb.com/docs

Developer

Altibase

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Microsoft

Robert Friberg et al

Initial release

1999

2008

1983

2019

2009

under the name LiveDB

Current release

v7.3, 2023, August 2023

4.1.3, July 2023

19.4.1, November 2021

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open source edition discontinued with March 2023

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

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.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

C++

Java

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

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

User defined using .NET types and collections

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

A http query request can return the data in XML format

yes

can be achieved using .NET

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

ANSI SQL-92

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes

via plugins

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

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

.NET Client API
HTTP API
LINQ

Supported programming languages

C
C++
Java

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

PHP

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

.Net

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

stored procedures and stored functions

yes

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

yes

Triggers

yes

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

yes

Domain Events

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

horizontal partitioning

client side managed; servers are not synchronized

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

yes

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

Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

depending on model

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Write ahead log

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 can be defined per object

simple rights management via user accounts and connection to external directory services

Azure Active Directory Authentication

Role based authorization

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
» more

News

Astra Vectorize: Generate Vector Embeddings with 1 Line of Code
22 May 2024

GitHub Copilot + DataStax Astra DB: Build GenAI Apps 100x Faster
21 May 2024

Empowering On-Premises Deployments with Generative AI: Introducing Vector Search for a Self-Managed Modern Architecture
15 May 2024

Tips and Tricks for the DataStax Astra CLI
7 May 2024

How to Build a Crystal Image Search App with Vector Search
25 April 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.