DBMS > CrateDB vs. Datomic vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison CrateDB vs. Datomic vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SQLite

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Distributed Database based on Lucene

Datomic builds on immutable values, supports point-in-time queries and uses 3rd party systems for durability

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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

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

Score	0.69
Rank	#226	Overall
	#37	Document stores
	#5	Spatial DBMS
	#16	Search engines
	#19	Time Series DBMS
	#11	Vector DBMS

Score	1.55
Rank	#144	Overall
	#67	Relational DBMS

Score	16.32
Rank	#35	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	3.28
Rank	#83	Overall
	#45	Relational DBMS

Score	103.35
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

cratedb.com

www.datomic.com

www.ibm.com/products/informix

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

cratedb.com/docs

docs.datomic.com

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

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

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Crate

Cognitect

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Microsoft

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2013

2012

1984

2019

2000

Current release

5.8.1, August 2024

1.0.7180, July 2024

14.10.FC5, November 2020

cloud service with continuous releases

3.46.1 (13 August 2024), August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Open Source

Public Domain

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

Java

Java, Clojure

C, C++ and Java

Server operating systems

All Operating Systems, including Kubernetes with CrateDB Kubernetes Operator support

All OS with a Java VM

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

server-less

Data scheme

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free)

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

bool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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

yes, but no triggers and constraints, and PostgreSQL compatibility

yes

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Prometheus Remote Read/Write
RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

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

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

.NET
Erlang
Go

community maintained client
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

community maintained client
Perl

community maintained client
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

community maintained client
Scala

community maintained client

Clojure
Java

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

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

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions (Javascript)

yes

Transaction Functions

yes

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Triggers

By using transaction functions

yes

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Configurable replication on table/partition-level

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

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

none

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

Eventual Consistency
Read-after-write consistency on record level

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

unique row identifiers can be used for implementing an optimistic concurrency control strategy

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using external storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Couchbase and others)

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

recommended only for testing and development

yes

User concepts

Access control

rights management via user accounts

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

Azure Active Directory Authentication

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