DBMS > Datastax Enterprise vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. NSDb vs. Oracle vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Datastax Enterprise vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. NSDb vs. Oracle vs. Sphinx

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

DataStax Enterprise (DSE) is the always-on, scalable data platform built on Apache Cassandra and designed for hybrid Cloud. DSE integrates graph, search, analytics, administration, developer tooling, and monitoring into a unified platform.

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Scalable, High-performance Time Series DBMS designed for Real-time Analytics on top of Kubernetes

Widely used RDBMS

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

Primary database model

column oriented

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
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

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	5.93
Rank	#56	Overall
	#4	Wide column stores

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	0.08
Rank	#369	Overall
	#40	Time Series DBMS

Score	1244.08
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	5.95
Rank	#55	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

www.datastax.com/products/datastax-enterprise

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

nsdb.io

www.oracle.com/database

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

docs.datastax.com

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

nsdb.io/Architecture

docs.oracle.com/en/database

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

DataStax

Microsoft

Oracle

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2011

2019

2017

1980

2001

Current release

6.8, April 2020

cloud service with continuous releases

23c, September 2023

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

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.

Datastax Astra DB: Astra DB simplifies cloud-native Cassandra application development for your apps, microservices and functions. Deploy in minutes on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and have it managed for you by the experts, with serverless, pay-as-you-go pricing.

Implementation language

Java

Java, Scala

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X

hosted

Linux
macOS

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

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

yes

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: int, bigint, decimal, string

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

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL); Spark SQL

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

SQL-like query language

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language)
TinkerPop Gremlin

with DSE Graph

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

gRPC
HTTP REST
WebSocket

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

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

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

Java
Scala

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

Sharding

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

configurable replication factor, datacenter aware, advanced replication for edge computing

yes

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

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

Immediate Consistency
Tunable Consistency

consistency level can be individually decided with each write operation

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Using Apache Lucene

yes

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

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'

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

DataStax Enterprise is scale-out data infrastructure for enterprises that need to...
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Competitive advantages

Supporting the following application requirements: Zero downtime - Built on Apache...
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Typical application scenarios

Applications that must be massively and linearly scalable with 100% uptime and able...
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Key customers

Capital One, Cisco, Comcast, eBay, McDonald's, Microsoft, Safeway, Sony, UBS, and...
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Market metrics

Among the Forbes 100 Most Innovative Companies, DataStax is trusted by 5 of the top...
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Licensing and pricing models

Annual subscription
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