DBMS > Couchbase vs. KairosDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. NuoDB vs. QuestDB

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. KairosDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. NuoDB vs. QuestDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Distributed Time Series DBMS based on Cassandra or H2

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

NuoDB is a webscale distributed database that supports SQL and ACID transactions

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Primary database model

column oriented

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

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

Relational DBMS

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

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	0.62
Rank	#239	Overall
	#20	Time Series DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	0.89
Rank	#198	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Score	2.52
Rank	#109	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

github.com/kairosdb/kairosdb

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.3ds.com/nuodb-distributed-sql-database

questdb.io

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

kairosdb.github.io

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

doc.nuodb.com

questdb.io/docs

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Microsoft

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

QuestDB Technology Inc

Initial release

2011

2013

2019

2013

2014

Current release

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

1.2.2, November 2018

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Java

C++

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

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

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

SQL with time-series extensions

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

Graphite protocol
HTTP REST
Telnet API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

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

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

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Java, SQL

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

based on Cassandra

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

data is dynamically stored/cached on the nodes where it is read/written

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

selectable replication factor

based on Cassandra

yes

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

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

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

Eventual Consistency

based on Cassandra
Immediate Consistency

based on Cassandra

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

tunable commit protocol

ACID for single-table writes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC

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

Temporary table

yes

through memory mapped files

User concepts

Access control

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

simple password-based access control

Azure Active Directory Authentication

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

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