DBMS > ArangoDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. NSDb

System Properties Comparison ArangoDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. NSDb

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Native multi-model DBMS for graph, document, key/value and search. All in one engine and accessible with one query language.

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Scalable, High-performance Time Series DBMS designed for Real-time Analytics on top of Kubernetes

Primary database model

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Search engine

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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	3.26
Rank	#88	Overall
	#15	Document stores
	#5	Graph DBMS
	#12	Key-value stores
	#10	Search engines

Score	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

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

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	0.08
Rank	#369	Overall
	#40	Time Series DBMS

Website

arangodb.com

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

nsdb.io

Technical documentation

docs.arangodb.com

firebase.google.com/docs/database

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

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

nsdb.io/Architecture

Social network pages

Developer

ArangoDB Inc.

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

Initial release

2012

2014

2019

2017

Current release

3.11.5, November 2023

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial license (Enterprise) available

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

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.

ArangoDB Cloud –The Managed Cloud Service of ArangoDB. Provides fully managed, and monitored cluster deployments of any size, with enterprise-grade security. Get started for free and continue for as little as $0,21/hour.

Implementation language

C++

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

automatically recognizes schema within a collection

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, double, boolean, list, hash

yes

JSON types

yes

bool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types

yes: int, bigint, decimal, string

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 properties auto-indexed by default

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

AQL
Foxx Framework
Graph API (Gremlin)
GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Java & SpringData
JSON style queries
VelocyPack/VelocyStream

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

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

gRPC
HTTP REST
WebSocket

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Rust

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

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

Java
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

limited functionality with using 'rules'

JavaScript

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

JavaScript

yes

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

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

since version 2.0

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication with configurable replication factor

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

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

can be done with stored procedures in JavaScript

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

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

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

configurable per collection or per write
Immediate Consistency
OneShard (highly available, fault-tolerant deployment mode with ACID semantics)

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Using Apache Lucene

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

User concepts

Access control

yes

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Azure Active Directory Authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Graph and Beyond. With more than 11,000 stargazers on GitHub, ArangoDB is the leading...
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Competitive advantages

Consolidation: As a native multi-model database, can be used as a full blown document...
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Typical application scenarios

Native multi-model in ArangoDB is being used for a broad range of projects across...
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Key customers

Cisco, Barclays, Refinitive, Siemens Mentor, Kabbage, Liaison, Douglas, MakeMyTrip,...
» more

Market metrics

ArangoDB is the leading native multi-model database with over 11,000 stargazers on...
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Licensing and pricing models

Very permissive Apache 2 License for Community Edition & commercial licenses are...
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.