DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. mSQL vs. MySQL vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. mSQL vs. MySQL vs. VoltDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

Widely used open source RDBMS

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

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

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	1.27
Rank	#167	Overall
	#77	Relational DBMS

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	1.44
Rank	#158	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

www.mysql.com

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

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

dev.mysql.com/doc

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Microsoft

Hughes Technologies

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2013

2019

1994

1995

2010

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

cloud service with continuous releases

4.4, October 2021

8.4.0, April 2024

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

free licenses can be provided

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

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++

C and C++

Java, C++

Server operating systems

Linux

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

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-like DML and DDL statements

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

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

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

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

C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

yes

proprietary syntax

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

none

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

yes

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

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

none

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Snapshots and command logging

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

Azure Active Directory Authentication

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

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