DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NebulaGraph vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NebulaGraph vs. Sphinx

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Search-as-a-service for web and mobile app development

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

A distributed, linear scalable, high perfomant Graph DBMS

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Graph DBMS

Search engine

Secondary database models

Document store

Vector 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	5.52
Rank	#59	Overall
	#6	Search engines

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	2.23
Rank	#116	Overall
	#10	Graph DBMS

Score	5.95
Rank	#55	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

impala.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

github.com/vesoft-inc/nebula
www.nebula-graph.io

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.nebula-graph.io

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Microsoft

Vesoft Inc.

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2013

2015

2014

2019

2001

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0 + Common Clause 1.0

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

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

C++

Server operating systems

Linux

hosted

Linux

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Strong typed schema

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON 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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

Nebula Graph internally uses the Key-Value store RocksDB for persistency. The vertices, edges, and their properties are stored as Key while their values are stored as Value. The primary indexes are per Key and secondary indexes are per Value.

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

SQL-like query language

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP API

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Browser interface
console (shell)
Cypher Query Language
GO Object Graph Mapper
Java Object Graph Mapper
NGBatis

ORM framework for NebulaGraph and Spring-Boot
Proprietary native API
Python Object Graph Mapper
Query language nGQL

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

.Net
C++
Go
Java
PHP
Python

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

JavaScript

user defined functions

Triggers

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

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

yes

using RocksDB

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

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 Azure authentication

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Role-based access control

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

NebulaGraph is a truly distributed, linearly scalable, lightning-fast graph database,...
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Competitive advantages

NebulaGraph boasts the world's only graph database solution that is able to host...
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Typical application scenarios

Social networking Fraud detection Knowledge graph Data warehouse management Anti...
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Key customers

Companies from a variety of industries have implemented NebulaGraph Database in production,...
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Market metrics

At our very early stage, NebulaGraph has already received over 10,000 stars on GitHub...
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Licensing and pricing models

NebulaGraph is open source and free to use under Apache 2.0 license.
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