DBMS > Databricks vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

System Properties Comparison Databricks vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

Our visitors often compare Databricks and Microsoft Azure Data Explorer with OpenSearch, Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and Elasticsearch.

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.

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	102.66
Rank	#12	Overall
	#2	Document stores
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	3.00
Rank	#86	Overall
	#47	Relational DBMS

Website

www.databricks.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

Technical documentation

docs.databricks.com

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

Developer

Databricks

Microsoft

Initial release

2013

2019

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or 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)

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

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

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

Supported programming languages

Python
R
Scala

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions and aggregates

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

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

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

Azure Active Directory Authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

Related products and services

We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

DB-Engines shares Q1 2025 database industry rankings and top climbers: Snowflake and PostgreSQL trending
1 May 2025, DB-Engines

PostgreSQL is the DBMS of the Year 2023
2 January 2024, Matthias Gelbmann, Paul Andlinger

show all

Recent citations in the news

AWS: Familiar AI Skills story with SAP Databricks twist
1 May 2025, ERP Today

LlamaIndex Secures Strategic Investments from Databricks and KPMG to Advance Enterprise AI Workflows
1 May 2025, ChannelE2E

Palantir and Databricks Announce Strategic Product Partnership to Deliver Secure and Efficient AI to Customers
13 March 2025, PR Newswire

Confluent and Databricks Partner to Enhance Real-Time Data Access for AI
3 May 2025, SDx Central

Databricks buys feature engineering startup Fennel to enhance AI model development
17 April 2025, SiliconANGLE

provided by Google News

Universal Destinations & Experiences proactively improves guest satisfaction with Azure Data Explorer
14 February 2025, Microsoft

Log and Telemetry Analytics Performance Benchmark
16 August 2022, Gigaom

Azure Data Explorer: Log and telemetry analytics benchmark
16 August 2022, Microsoft Azure

Azure Data Explorer Supports Native Ingestion from Amazon S3
7 September 2022, infoq.com

Azure Data Explorer gets new engine, numerous enhancements and Synapse integration
14 October 2020, ZDNet

provided by Google News

Share this page