DBMS > CrateDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Oracle vs. Sphinx vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison CrateDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Oracle vs. Sphinx vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Distributed Database based on Lucene

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Widely used RDBMS

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

column oriented

Secondary database models

Relational 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

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

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

Score	0.71
Rank	#227	Overall
	#37	Document stores
	#5	Spatial DBMS
	#16	Search engines
	#19	Time Series DBMS
	#8	Vector DBMS

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	1244.08
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	5.95
Rank	#55	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	1.52
Rank	#153	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

cratedb.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.oracle.com/database

sphinxsearch.com

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

cratedb.com/docs

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

docs.oracle.com/en/database

sphinxsearch.com/docs

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Crate

Microsoft

Oracle

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2013

2019

1980

2001

2019

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

23c, September 2023

3.5.1, February 2023

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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.

CrateDB Cloud: a distributed SQL database that spreads data and processing across an elastic cluster of shared nothing nodes. CrateDB Cloud enables data insights at scale on Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

Implementation language

Java

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

All Operating Systems, including Kubernetes with CrateDB Kubernetes Operator support

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

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

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

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

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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

full-text index on all search fields

yes

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes, but no triggers and constraints, and PostgreSQL compatibility

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

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

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

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Proprietary protocol

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

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

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions (Javascript)

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

Triggers

yes

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Configurable replication on table/partition-level

yes

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

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Spark connector (open source): github.com/Azure/azure-kusto-spark

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Read-after-write consistency on record level

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual 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

isolation level can be parameterized

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

yes

User concepts

Access control

rights management via user accounts

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

The enterprise database for time series, documents, and vectors. Distributed - Native...
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Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Response time in milliseconds: e ven for complex ad-hoc queries. Massive scaling...
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Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

IoT: accelerate your IIoT projects with CrateDB, delivering real-time analytics...
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As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

Across all continents, CrateDB is used by companies of all sizes to meet the most...
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All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

The CrateDB open source project was started in 2013 Honorable Mention in 2021 Gartner®...
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As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

See CrateDB pricing >
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Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.