DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Spark SQL vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Spark SQL vs. VoltDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Spark SQL is a component on top of 'Spark Core' for structured data processing

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Relational DBMS

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

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	74.45
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	18.04
Rank	#33	Overall
	#20	Relational DBMS

Score	1.47
Rank	#157	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

spark.apache.org/sql

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

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

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Amazon

Microsoft

Apache Software Foundation

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2012

2019

1989

2014

2010

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

3.5.0 ( 2.13), September 2023

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Scala

Java, C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

schema-free

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

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

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

JDBC
ODBC

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

Java
Python
R
Scala

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Java

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

yes, utilizing Spark Core

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

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

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

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

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Snapshots and command logging

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)

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

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