DBMS > ClickHouse vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

System Properties Comparison ClickHouse vs. Datastax Enterprise vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A high-performance, column-oriented SQL DBMS for online analytical processing (OLAP) that uses all available system resources to their full potential to process each analytical query as fast as possible. It is available as both an open-source software and a cloud offering.

DataStax Enterprise (DSE) is the always-on, scalable data platform built on Apache Cassandra and designed for hybrid Cloud. DSE integrates graph, search, analytics, administration, developer tooling, and monitoring into a unified platform.

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

Elastic, large scale data warehouse service leveraging the broad eco-system of SQL Server

Primary database model

column oriented

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Vector 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

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	15.88
Rank	#37	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	4.82
Rank	#65	Overall
	#4	Wide column stores

Score	3.28
Rank	#83	Overall
	#45	Relational DBMS

Score	72.95
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	18.98
Rank	#31	Overall
	#19	Relational DBMS

Website

clickhouse.com

www.datastax.com/products/datastax-enterprise

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

azure.microsoft.com/services/synapse-analytics

Technical documentation

clickhouse.com/docs

docs.datastax.com

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

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

docs.microsoft.com/azure/synapse-analytics

Developer

Clickhouse Inc.

DataStax

Microsoft

Initial release

2016

2011

2019

2010

2016

Current release

v24.6.2.17-stable, July 2024

6.8, April 2020

cloud service with continuous releases

V12

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

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.

DoubleCloud: Fully managed ClickHouse alongside best-in-class managed open-source services to build analytics at scale.
ClickHouse Cloud: Get the performance you love from open source ClickHouse in a serverless offering that takes care of the details so you can spend more time getting insight out of the fastest database on earth.

Datastax Astra DB: Astra DB simplifies cloud-native Cassandra application development for your apps, microservices and functions. Deploy in minutes on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and have it managed for you by the experts, with serverless, pay-as-you-go pricing.

Implementation language

C++

Java

C++

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

Linux
OS X

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

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

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL); Spark SQL

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

APIs and other access methods

gRPC
HTTP REST
JDBC
MySQL wire protocol
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Proprietary protocol

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language)
TinkerPop Gremlin

with DSE Graph

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

3rd party library
C++
Elixir

3rd party library
Go

3rd party library
Java

3rd party library
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party library
Kotlin

3rd party library
Nim

3rd party library
Perl

3rd party library
PHP

3rd party library
Python

3rd party library
R

3rd party library
Ruby

3rd party library
Rust
Scala

3rd party library

C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
Java
PHP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Transact SQL

Triggers

yes

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

key based and custom

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Asynchronous and synchronous physical replication; geographically distributed replicas; support for object storages.

configurable replication factor, datacenter aware, advanced replication for edge computing

yes

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

yes, with always 3 replicas available

yes

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

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency
Tunable Consistency

consistency level can be individually decided with each write operation

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/synapse-analytics/sql-data-warehouse/sql-data-warehouse-table-constraints

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

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 and roles. Column and row based policies. Quotas and resource limits. Pluggable authentication with LDAP and Kerberos. Password based, X.509 certificate, and SSH key authentication.

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

DataStax Enterprise is scale-out data infrastructure for enterprises that need to...
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Competitive advantages

Supporting the following application requirements: Zero downtime - Built on Apache...
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Typical application scenarios

Applications that must be massively and linearly scalable with 100% uptime and able...
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Key customers

Capital One, Cisco, Comcast, eBay, McDonald's, Microsoft, Safeway, Sony, UBS, and...
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Market metrics

Among the Forbes 100 Most Innovative Companies, DataStax is trusted by 5 of the top...
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Licensing and pricing models

Annual subscription
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