DBMS > Datomic vs. Interbase vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Splunk

System Properties Comparison Datomic vs. Interbase vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Splunk

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Light-weight proven RDBMS

originally from Borland

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Analytics Platform for Big Data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Relational DBMS

Search engine

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

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.59
Rank	#150	Overall
	#69	Relational DBMS

Score	4.61
Rank	#72	Overall
	#39	Relational DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	86.45
Rank	#14	Overall
	#2	Search engines

Website

www.datomic.com

www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.splunk.com

Technical documentation

docs.datomic.com

docs.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

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

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk

Developer

Cognitect

Embarcadero

Microsoft

Splunk Inc.

Initial release

2012

1984

2019

1989

2003

Current release

1.0.6735, June 2023

InterBase 2020, December 2019

cloud service with continuous releases

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Limited free edition and free developer edition 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.

Implementation language

Java, Clojure

C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

Android
iOS
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

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

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.

export as XML data possible

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

Splunk Search Processing Language for search commands

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

HTTP REST

Supported programming languages

Clojure
Java

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
Object Pascal
PHP
Ruby

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

C#
Java
JavaScript
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

yes

Interbase procedure and trigger language

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

yes

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

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Interbase Change Views

yes

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

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

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

ACID

A 'Transaction' in Splunk has a different meaning: grouping related events into a single one for later searching

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Multiversion concurreny control

yes

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

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