DBMS > InfluxDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. mSQL vs. Oracle vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison InfluxDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. mSQL vs. Oracle vs. Sphinx

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

DBMS for storing time series, events and metrics

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

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

Spatial DBMS

with GEO package

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	24.39
Rank	#28	Overall
	#1	Time Series DBMS

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	1.27
Rank	#169	Overall
	#76	Relational DBMS

Score	1244.08
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	5.95
Rank	#55	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

www.influxdata.com/products/influxdb-overview

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

www.oracle.com/database

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

docs.influxdata.com/influxdb

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

docs.oracle.com/en/database

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Microsoft

Hughes Technologies

Oracle

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2013

2019

1994

1980

2001

Current release

2.7.6, April 2024

cloud service with continuous releases

4.4, October 2021

23c, September 2023

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License; commercial enterprise version available

commercial

free licenses can be provided

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.

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X

through Homebrew

hosted

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

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

Numeric data and Strings

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

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API
JSON over UDP

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

JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

.Net
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala

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

C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

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

in enterprise version only

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

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

selectable replication factor

in enterprise version only

yes

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

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

none

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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

Depending on used storage engine

yes

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

User concepts

Access control

simple rights management via user accounts

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

InfluxData is the creator of InfluxDB , the open source time series database. It...
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Competitive advantages

Time to Value InfluxDB is available in all the popular languages and frameworks,...
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Typical application scenarios

IoT & Sensor Monitoring Developers are witnessing the instrumentation of every available...
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Key customers

InfluxData has more than 1,900 paying customers, including customers include MuleSoft,...
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Market metrics

Fastest-growing database to drive 27,500 GitHub stars Over 750,000 daily active instances
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open source core with closed source clustering available either on-premise or on...
» more

News

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5 June 2024

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4 June 2024

Monitoring Your Cloud Environments and Applications with InfluxDB
30 May 2024

Webinar Recap: Unleash the Full Potential of Your Time Series Data with InfluxDB and AWS
29 May 2024

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