DBMS > Databricks vs. Google BigQuery vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

System Properties Comparison Databricks vs. Google BigQuery vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

The Databricks Lakehouse Platform combines elements of data lakes and data warehouses to provide a unified view onto structured and unstructured data. It is based on Apache Spark.

Large scale data warehouse service with append-only tables

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Secondary database models

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	65.82
Rank	#18	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#12	Relational DBMS

Score	54.64
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	6.50
Rank	#68	Overall
	#37	Relational DBMS

Website

databricks.com

cloud.google.com/bigquery

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

Technical documentation

databricks.com/documentation

cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs

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

Developer

Databricks

Google

Microsoft

Initial release

2013

2010

2019

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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.

Server operating systems

hosted

Data scheme

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

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

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

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

SQL

Support of SQL

with Databricks SQL

yes

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

Supported programming languages

Python
R
Scala

.Net
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions and aggregates

user defined functions

in JavaScript

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Triggers

yes

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

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

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

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

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Since BigQuery is designed for querying data

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.

User concepts

Access control

Access privileges (owner, writer, reader) on dataset, table or view level

Google Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM)

Azure Active Directory Authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Azure Data Explorer is a fast and highly scalable data exploration service for log...
» more

Competitive advantages

Kusto Query Language (innovative query language, optimized for high performance data...
» more

Typical application scenarios

IoT applications IoT devices generate billions of sensor readings. Normalizing and...
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Key customers

Microsoft, DocuSign, Taboola, Bosch, Siemens Healthineers, Bühler, Ecolab, Zoomd
» more

Market metrics

Azure Data Explorer is the data service for Azure Monitor, Azure Time Series Insights,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

An Azure Data Explorer cluster is a pair of engine and data management clusters which...
» more

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