DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. CrateDB vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. CrateDB vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Distributed Database based on Lucene

A containerised multi-model DBMS, interoperability and analytics data platform with wide capabilities for vertical and horizontal scalability

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store
Key-value store
Object oriented DBMS
Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	0.73
Rank	#224	Overall
	#37	Document stores
	#5	Spatial DBMS
	#16	Search engines
	#19	Time Series DBMS
	#8	Vector DBMS

Score	4.05
Rank	#83	Overall
	#14	Document stores
	#10	Key-value stores
	#1	Object oriented DBMS
	#45	Relational DBMS

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

cratedb.com

www.intersystems.com/products/intersystems-iris

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

cratedb.com/docs

docs.intersystems.com/irislatest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

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

Developer

Amazon

Crate

InterSystems

Microsoft

Initial release

2012

2013

2018

2014

2019

Current release

2023.3, June 2023

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

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.

CrateDB Cloud: a distributed SQL database that spreads data and processing across an elastic cluster of shared nothing nodes. CrateDB Cloud enables data insights at scale on Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

Implementation language

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

All Operating Systems, including Kubernetes with CrateDB Kubernetes Operator support

AIX
Linux
macOS
Ubuntu
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free)

depending on used data model

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

yes

bool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-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

All properties auto-indexed by default

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes, but no triggers and constraints, and PostgreSQL compatibility

yes

SQL-like query language

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Prometheus Remote Read/Write
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

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

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.NET
Erlang
Go

community maintained client
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

community maintained client
Perl

community maintained client
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

community maintained client
Scala

community maintained client

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

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions (Javascript)

yes

JavaScript

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

JavaScript

yes

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

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Configurable replication on table/partition-level

Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

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

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

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

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency
Read-after-write consistency on record level

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Eventual 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

unique row identifiers can be used for implementing an optimistic concurrency control strategy

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

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)

rights management via user accounts

yes

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Azure Active Directory Authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

The enterprise database for time series, documents, and vectors. Distributed - Native...
» more

InterSystems IRIS is a complete cloud-first data platform which includes a multi-model...
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Competitive advantages

Response time in milliseconds: e ven for complex ad-hoc queries. Massive scaling...
» more

Typical application scenarios

IoT: accelerate your IIoT projects with CrateDB, delivering real-time analytics...
» more

Key customers

Across all continents, CrateDB is used by companies of all sizes to meet the most...
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Market metrics

The CrateDB open source project was started in 2013 Honorable Mention in 2021 Gartner®...
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Licensing and pricing models

See CrateDB pricing >
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.