DBMS > IBM Cloudant vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Quasardb vs. TimesTen vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison IBM Cloudant vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Quasardb vs. TimesTen vs. VoltDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Distributed, high-performance timeseries database

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

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	2.68
Rank	#106	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	0.14
Rank	#332	Overall
	#29	Time Series DBMS

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Score	1.44
Rank	#158	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

quasar.ai

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

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

doc.quasar.ai/master

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

Microsoft

quasardb

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2010

2019

2009

1998

2010

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

3.14.1, January 2024

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Free community edition, Non-profit organizations and non-commercial usage are eligible for free licenses

commercial

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

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

Erlang

C++

Java, C++

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

schema-free

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

integer and binary

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

with tags

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

SQL-like query language

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

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

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

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

PL/SQL

Java

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

Sharding

consistent hashing

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

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

Source-replica replication with selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

with Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a document possible

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Optimistic locking

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using LevelDB

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

yes

Snapshots and command logging

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

Transient mode

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per database

Azure Active Directory Authentication

Cryptographically strong user authentication and audit trail

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

More information provided by the system vendor

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Related products and services

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