DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Memcached vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SwayDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Memcached vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SwayDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

An embeddable, non-blocking, type-safe key-value store for single or multiple disks and in-memory storage

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	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	19.42
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#382	Overall
	#59	Key-value stores

Website

impala.apache.org

www.memcached.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

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

swaydb.simer.au

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

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

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Microsoft

Simer Plaha

Initial release

2013

2003

2019

1989

2018

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

1.6.25, March 2024

cloud service with continuous releases

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

BSD license

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GNU Affero GPL V3.0

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++

Scala

Server operating systems

Linux

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

schema-free

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-like DML and DDL statements

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary protocol

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

.Net
C
C++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
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
Kotlin
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

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

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

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

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

yes

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

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

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

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual 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

Atomic execution of operations

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

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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