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

with SAP Hana, Enterprise Edition
Spatial DBMS

Key-value store

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

Score	0.13
Rank	#346	Overall
	#33	Time Series DBMS

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	44.27
Rank	#23	Overall
	#16	Relational DBMS

Score	4.08
Rank	#76	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Website

blueflood.io

cassandra.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.sap.com/products/hana.html

www.scylladb.com

Technical documentation

github.com/rax-maas/blueflood/wiki

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

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

help.sap.com/hana

docs.scylladb.com

Developer

Rackspace

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Microsoft

SAP

ScyllaDB

Initial release

2013

2008

2019

2010

2015

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

cloud service with continuous releases

2.0 SPS07 (April 4, 2023), April 2023

ScyllaDB Open Source 5.4.1, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

also available as a cloud based service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Scylla Cloud: Create real-time applications that run at global scale with Scylla Cloud, the industry’s most powerful NoSQL DBaaS

Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Appliance or cloud-service

Linux

Data scheme

predefined scheme

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

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

cluster global secondary indices

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

APIs and other access methods

HTTP REST

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

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

JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary protocol (CQL)

compatible with CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
RESTful HTTP API (DynamoDB compatible)
Thrift

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

For CQL interface: C#, C++, Clojure, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala
For DynamoDB interface: .Net, ColdFusion, Erlang, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

SQLScript, R

yes, Lua

Triggers

yes

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

based on Cassandra

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

based on Cassandra

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

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

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

based on Cassandra
Immediate Consistency

based on Cassandra

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single 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

in-memory tables

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Azure Active Directory Authentication

yes

Access rights for users can be defined per object

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

ScyllaDB is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale. It’s adopted...
» more

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

Highly-performant (efficiently utilizes full resources of a node and network; millions...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

ScyllaDB is ideal for applications that require high throughput and low latency at...
» more

Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

Discord, Epic Games, Expedia, Zillow, Comcast, Disney+ Hotstar, Samsung, ShareChat,...
» more

Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

ScyllaDB typically offers ~75% total cost of ownership savings, with ~5X higher throughput...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
» more

ScyllaDB Open Source - free open source software (AGPL) ScyllaDB Enterprise - subscription-based...
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.