DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Axibase vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Axibase vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Scalable TimeSeries DBMS based on HBase with integrated rule engine and visualization

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Primary database model

column oriented

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	12.45
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	0.35
Rank	#282	Overall
	#25	Time Series DBMS

Score	2.84
Rank	#100	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

axibase.com/docs/atsd/finance

cloud.google.com/spanner

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

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

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

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

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

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Axibase Corporation

Google

Microsoft

Initial release

2013

2017

2019

1989

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

15585

cloud service with continuous releases

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

Community Edition (single node) is free, Enterprise Edition (distributed) is paid

commercial

restricted free version is available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Java

C++

Server operating systems

Linux

hosted

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

short, integer, long, float, double, decimal, string

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-like DML and DDL statements

SQL-like query language

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
Proprietary protocol (Network API)
RESTful HTTP API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

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

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

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Go
Java
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

yes

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

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

Triggers

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes

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

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

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

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

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, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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