DBMS > Apache Drill vs. Datomic vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. RocksDB vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

System Properties Comparison Apache Drill vs. Datomic vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. RocksDB vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Schema-free SQL Query Engine for Hadoop, NoSQL and Cloud Storage

Datomic builds on immutable values, supports point-in-time queries and uses 3rd party systems for durability

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Embeddable persistent key-value store optimized for fast storage (flash and RAM)

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Key-value store

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

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

Score	1.95
Rank	#127	Overall
	#23	Document stores
	#60	Relational DBMS

Score	1.59
Rank	#150	Overall
	#69	Relational DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	3.65
Rank	#85	Overall
	#11	Key-value stores

Score	4.25
Rank	#79	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Website

drill.apache.org

www.datomic.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

rocksdb.org

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

Technical documentation

drill.apache.org/docs

docs.datomic.com

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

github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Cognitect

Microsoft

Facebook, Inc.

SAP

formerly Sybase

Initial release

2012

2019

2013

1992

Current release

1.20.3, January 2023

1.0.6735, June 2023

cloud service with continuous releases

8.11.4, April 2024

17, July 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

Open Source

BSD

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

Java, Clojure

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

Linux

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

schema-free

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

SQL SELECT statement is SQL:2003 compliant

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP API

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

C++ API
Java API

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C++

Clojure
Java

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

C
C++
Go
Java
Perl
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

yes

Transaction Functions

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

Triggers

By using transaction functions

yes

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

horizontal partitioning

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

yes

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

yes

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

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

none

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

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

Depending on the underlying data source

yes

using external storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Couchbase and others)

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

Depending on the underlying data source

yes

recommended only for testing and development

yes

User concepts

Access control

Depending on the underlying data source

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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