DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. EXASOL vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. EXASOL vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Snowflake

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

High-performance, in-memory, MPP database specifically designed for in-memory analytics.

High performance Time Series DBMS

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

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

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational 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	1.99
Rank	#124	Overall
	#58	Relational DBMS

Score	7.55
Rank	#53	Overall
	#3	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.exasol.com

kx.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.exasol.com/resources

code.kx.com

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

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Amazon

Exasol

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2012

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2019

2014

Current release

3.6, May 2018

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

free 32-bit version

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

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

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

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

table attribute 'grouped'

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language (q)

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

.Net
JDBC
ODBC
WebSocket

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

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

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Java
Lua
Python
R

C
C#
C++
Go
J
Java
JavaScript
Lua
MatLab
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Scala

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

with views

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

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

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

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

yes

Hadoop integration

similar paradigm used for internal processing

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

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

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)

Access rights for users, groups and roles according to SQL-standard

rights management via user accounts

Azure Active Directory Authentication

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
» more

Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
» more

Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
» more

Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
» more

Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

upon request
» more

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.