DBMS > Apache Pinot vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

System Properties Comparison Apache Pinot vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Realtime distributed OLAP datastore, designed to answer OLAP queries with low latency

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

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

Score	0.50
Rank	#248	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	3.00
Rank	#86	Overall
	#47	Relational DBMS

Website

pinot.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

Technical documentation

docs.pinot.apache.org

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

Developer

Apache Software Foundation and contributors

Microsoft

Initial release

2015

2019

Current release

1.0.0, September 2023

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Java

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java JDK11 or higher

hosted

Data scheme

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

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

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

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

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

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
Python

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Triggers

yes

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/management/updatepolicy

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

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

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

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.

User concepts

Access control

Azure Active Directory Authentication

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More resources

Recent citations in the news

Microsoft Warns of Attackers Exploiting Misconfigured Apache Pinot Installations
6 May 2025, SecurityWeek

Misconfigured Apache Pinot instances under attack
7 May 2025, SC Media

Deploy real-time analytics with StarTree for managed Apache Pinot on AWS
13 March 2025, Amazon Web Services

Serving Millions of Apache Pinot™ Queries with Neutrino
11 December 2024, Uber

Apache Pinot Brings Real Time Analysis to Columnar Data
13 December 2024, The New Stack

provided by Google News

Universal Destinations & Experiences proactively improves guest satisfaction with Azure Data Explorer
14 February 2025, Microsoft

Log and Telemetry Analytics Performance Benchmark
16 August 2022, Gigaom

Azure Data Explorer: Log and telemetry analytics benchmark
16 August 2022, Microsoft Azure

Azure Data Explorer Supports Native Ingestion from Amazon S3
7 September 2022, infoq.com

Azure Data Explorer gets new engine, numerous enhancements and Synapse integration
14 October 2020, ZDNET

provided by Google News

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