DBMS > Apache Drill vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

System Properties Comparison Apache Drill vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

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

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

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	1.90
Rank	#126	Overall
	#23	Document stores
	#60	Relational DBMS

Score	24.97
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	3.28
Rank	#83	Overall
	#45	Relational DBMS

Score	3.50
Rank	#81	Overall
	#44	Relational DBMS

Website

drill.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

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

Technical documentation

drill.apache.org/docs

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

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

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Microsoft

SAP

formerly Sybase

Initial release

2012

2014

2019

1992

Current release

1.20.3, January 2023

cloud service with continuous releases

17, July 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

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.

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

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

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 properties auto-indexed by default

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL SELECT statement is SQL:2003 compliant

SQL-like query language

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

APIs and other access methods

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

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C++

.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

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

JavaScript

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

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

Triggers

JavaScript

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

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

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

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

none

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session 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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

Depending on the underlying data source

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

User concepts

Access control

Depending on the underlying data source

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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