DBMS > Couchbase vs. IBM Db2 vs. InterSystems Caché vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. IBM Db2 vs. InterSystems Caché vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Caché is a deprecated database engine which is substituted with InterSystems IRIS. It therefore is removed from the DB-Engines Ranking.

Description

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

A multi-model DBMS and application server

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Key-value store
Object oriented DBMS
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

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	16.74
Rank	#33	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	123.05
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	3.28
Rank	#83	Overall
	#45	Relational DBMS

Score	807.76
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

www.ibm.com/products/db2

www.intersystems.com/products/cache

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

docs.intersystems.com

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

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

IBM

InterSystems

Microsoft

Initial release

2011

1983

host version

1997

2019

1989

Current release

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

12.1, October 2016

2018.1.4, May 2020

cloud service with continuous releases

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

commercial

free version is available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

AIX
HP Open VMS
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

depending on used data model

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

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

yes

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

APIs and other access methods

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

.NET Client API
JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

C#
C++
Java

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

yes

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

Source-replica replication

yes

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

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

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
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

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

Ephemeral buckets

yes

User concepts

Access control

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users, groups and roles

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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