DBMS > Graphite vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Snowflake vs. Vertica

System Properties Comparison Graphite vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Snowflake vs. Vertica

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Data logging and graphing tool for time series data

The storage layer (fixed size database) is called Whisper

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

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

Cloud or off-cloud analytical database and query engine for structured and semi-structured streaming and batch data. Machine learning platform with built-in algorithms, data preparation capabilities, and model evaluation and management via SQL or Python.

Primary database model

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

column oriented

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

Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

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

Score	5.19
Rank	#62	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Score	3.28
Rank	#83	Overall
	#45	Relational DBMS

Score	133.72
Rank	#7	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	9.62
Rank	#42	Overall
	#26	Relational DBMS

Website

github.com/graphite-project/graphite-web

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.snowflake.com

www.vertica.com

Technical documentation

graphite.readthedocs.io

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

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

vertica.com/documentation

Developer

Chris Davis

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

OpenText

previously Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard

Initial release

2006

2019

2014

2005

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

12.0.3, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Limited community edition free

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

on-premises, all major clouds - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and containers

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

Python

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Unix

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

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

Yes, but also semi-structure/unstructured data storage, and complex hierarchical data (like Parquet) stored and/or queried.

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

Numeric data only

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

all fields are automatically indexed

No Indexes Required. Different internal optimization strategy, but same functionality included.

SQL

Support of SQL

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

Full 1999 standard plus machine learning, time series and geospatial. Over 650 functions.

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API
Sockets

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

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
Kafka Connector
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spark Connector
vSQL

character-based, interactive, front-end utility

Supported programming languages

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

user defined functions

yes, PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, with minor differences

Triggers

yes

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

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes, called Custom Alerts

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

horizontal partitioning, hierarchical partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

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

yes

Multi-source replication

One, or more copies of data replicated across nodes, or object-store used for repository.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

Bi-directional Spark integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

locking

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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard; supports Kerberos, LDAP, Ident and hash

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