DBMS > Interbase vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Interbase vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. VoltDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Light-weight proven RDBMS

originally from Borland

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

A Wide Column Store for rapid development using massive semi-structured datasets

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

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	4.61
Rank	#72	Overall
	#39	Relational DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	4.48
Rank	#75	Overall
	#6	Wide column stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	1.44
Rank	#158	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/tables

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

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

docs.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

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

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

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Embarcadero

Microsoft

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

1984

2019

2012

1989

2010

Current release

InterBase 2020, December 2019

cloud service with continuous releases

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

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

C++

Java, C++

Server operating systems

Android
iOS
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

yes

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

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

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

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

RESTful HTTP API

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

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

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

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

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

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

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Interbase procedure and trigger language

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

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

Java

Triggers

yes

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

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

Interbase Change Views

yes

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

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
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

optimistic locking

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Multiversion concurreny control

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Azure Active Directory Authentication

Access rights based on private key authentication or shared access signatures

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

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