DBMS > Citus vs. HarperDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. MySQL vs. PostGIS

System Properties Comparison Citus vs. HarperDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. MySQL vs. PostGIS

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Scalable hybrid operational and analytics RDBMS for big data use cases based on PostgreSQL

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Widely used open source RDBMS

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

Primary database model

column oriented

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Spatial 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

Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.15
Rank	#117	Overall
	#56	Relational DBMS

Score	0.60
Rank	#244	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	1061.34
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	21.72
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Website

www.citusdata.com

www.harperdb.io

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.mysql.com

postgis.net

Technical documentation

docs.citusdata.com

docs.harperdb.io/docs

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

dev.mysql.com/doc

postgis.net/documentation

Developer

HarperDB

Microsoft

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Initial release

2010

2017

2019

1995

2005

Current release

8.1, December 2018

3.1, August 2021

cloud service with continuous releases

8.4.0, April 2024

3.4.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

commercial

free community edition available

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

GPL v2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

Node.js

C and C++

Server operating systems

Linux

Linux
OS X

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

dynamic schema

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

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

specific XML type available, but no XML query functionality

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

SQL-like data manipulation statements

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

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

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

yes

proprietary syntax

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

yes

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

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

based on PostgreSQL

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

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic execution of specific operations

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

Azure Active Directory Authentication

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

yes

based on PostgreSQL

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