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)
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

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	118.01
Rank	#11	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	160.32
Rank	#7	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	7.54
Rank	#58	Overall
	#34	Relational DBMS

Score	57.26
Rank	#20	Overall
	#3	Search engines

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.ibm.com/analytics/db2

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

lucene.apache.org/solr

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSEPGG

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

lucene.apache.org/solr/resources.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

IBM

Microsoft

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

2008

1983

host version

2019

2006

Current release

4.0.4, May 2022

12.1, October 2016

cloud service with continuous releases

9.0.0, May 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

free version is available

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2

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.

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

Implementation language

Java

C and C++

Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

runs as a servlet in servlet container (e.g. Tomcat, Jetty is included)

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

Dynamic Fields enables on-the-fly addition of new fields

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

supports customizable data types and automatic typing

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

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

Solr Parallel SQL Interface

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

.Net
Erlang
Java
JavaScript
any language that supports sockets and either XML or JSON
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Java plugins

Triggers

yes

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

yes

User configurable commands triggered on index changes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

yes

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

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

spark-solr: github.com/lucidworks/spark-solr and streaming expressions to reduce

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

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

optimistic locking

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Azure Active Directory Authentication

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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

Azure Data Explorer is a fast and highly scalable data exploration service for log...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

Kusto Query Language (innovative query language, optimized for high performance data...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

IoT applications IoT devices generate billions of sensor readings. Normalizing and...
» more

Key customers

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

Microsoft, DocuSign, Taboola, Bosch, Siemens Healthineers, Bühler, Ecolab, Zoomd
» more

Market metrics

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

Azure Data Explorer is the data service for Azure Monitor, Azure Time Series Insights,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

An Azure Data Explorer cluster is a pair of engine and data management clusters which...
» more

News

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19 May 2022

Lift your MLOps pipeline to the cloud with Feast and Astra DB
18 May 2022

Moving to Cloud-Native Applications and Data with Kubernetes and Apache Cassandra
17 May 2022

Why a Cloud-Native Database Must Run on K8s
12 May 2022

Introduction to Apache Cassandra - the “Lamborghini” of the NoSQL World
11 May 2022

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.