DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Citus vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SwayDB vs. Vertica

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Citus vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SwayDB vs. Vertica

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Hosted, scalable database service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

Scalable hybrid operational and analytics RDBMS for big data use cases based on PostgreSQL

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

An embeddable, non-blocking, type-safe key-value store for single or multiple disks and in-memory storage

Cloud or off-cloud analytical database and query engine for structured and semi-structured streaming and batch data. Machine learning platform with built-in algorithms, data preparation capabilities, and model evaluation and management via SQL or Python.

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Column oriented

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

Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

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

Score	74.07
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	2.21
Rank	#118	Overall
	#56	Relational DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#382	Overall
	#59	Key-value stores

Score	10.68
Rank	#43	Overall
	#27	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.citusdata.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

swaydb.simer.au

www.vertica.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

docs.citusdata.com

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

vertica.com/documentation

Developer

Amazon

Microsoft

Simer Plaha

OpenText

previously Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard

Initial release

2012

2010

2019

2018

2005

Current release

8.1, December 2018

cloud service with continuous releases

12.0.3, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

commercial

Open Source

GNU Affero GPL V3.0

commercial

Limited community edition free

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

on-premises, all major clouds - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and containers

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

Implementation language

Scala

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

schema-free

Yes, but also semi-structure/unstructured data storage, and complex hierarchical data (like Parquet) stored and/or queried.

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

specific XML type available, but no XML query functionality

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

No Indexes Required. Different internal optimization strategy, but same functionality included.

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

Full 1999 standard plus machine learning, time series and geospatial. Over 650 functions.

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

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

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
Kafka Connector
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spark Connector
vSQL

character-based, interactive, front-end utility

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

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

Java
Kotlin
Scala

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

yes, PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, with minor differences

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

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

yes, called Custom Alerts

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

horizontal partitioning, hierarchical partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

yes

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

none

Multi-source replication

One, or more copies of data replicated across nodes, or object-store used for repository.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

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

Bi-directional Spark integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID across one or more tables within a single AWS account and region

ACID

Atomic execution of operations

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

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard; supports Kerberos, LDAP, Ident and hash

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Deploy-anywhere database for large-scale analytical deployments. Deploy off-cloud,...
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Competitive advantages

Fast, scalable, and capable of high concurrency. Separation of compute/storage leverages...
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Typical application scenarios

Communication and network analytics, Embedded analytics, Fraud monitoring and Risk...
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Key customers

Abiba Systems, Adform, adMarketplace, AmeriPride, Anritsu, AOL, Avito, Auckland Transport,...
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Licensing and pricing models

Cost-based models and subscription-based models are both available. One license is...
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