DBMS > EXASOL vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison EXASOL vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Snowflake

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

High-performance, in-memory, MPP database specifically designed for in-memory analytics.

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

High performance Time Series DBMS

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Relational DBMS

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

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

Score	2.25
Rank	#120	Overall
	#57	Relational DBMS

Score	2.89
Rank	#105	Overall
	#53	Relational DBMS

Score	7.70
Rank	#53	Overall
	#3	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	5.16
Rank	#69	Overall
	#37	Relational DBMS

Score	123.20
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

www.exasol.com

cloud.google.com/spanner

kx.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

www.exasol.com/resources

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

code.kx.com

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

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Exasol

Google

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2000

2017

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2019

2014

Current release

3.6, May 2018

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free 32-bit version

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.

Implementation language

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

table attribute 'grouped'

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like query language (q)

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

APIs and other access methods

.Net
JDBC
ODBC
WebSocket

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

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

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Java
Lua
Python
R

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C
C#
C++
Go
J
Java
JavaScript
Lua
MatLab
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Scala

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

with views

yes

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

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

Source-replica replication

yes

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

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Hadoop integration

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

similar paradigm used for internal processing

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

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.

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

rights management via user accounts

Azure Active Directory Authentication

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
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Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
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Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
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Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
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Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
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Licensing and pricing models

upon request
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.