DBMS > Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. Milvus vs. Redis

System Properties Comparison Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. Milvus vs. Redis

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Search-as-a-service for web and mobile app development

Elastic, large scale data warehouse service leveraging the broad eco-system of SQL Server

A DBMS designed for efficient storage of vector data and vector similarity searches

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

Primary database model

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Vector DBMS

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

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

Score	7.55
Rank	#53	Overall
	#3	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	5.59
Rank	#63	Overall
	#7	Search engines

Score	20.56
Rank	#31	Overall
	#19	Relational DBMS

Score	2.31
Rank	#113	Overall
	#3	Vector DBMS

Score	157.80
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Website

kx.com

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search

azure.microsoft.com/services/synapse-analytics

milvus.io

redis.com
redis.io

Technical documentation

code.kx.com

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search

docs.microsoft.com/azure/synapse-analytics

milvus.io/docs/overview.md

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

Developer

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Microsoft

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

Initial release

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2015

2016

2019

2009

Current release

3.6, May 2018

2.3.4, January 2024

7.2.4, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free 32-bit version

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

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.

Zilliz Cloud – Cloud-native service for Milvus

Aiven for Redis: Fully managed in-memory key-value store for all your caching and speedy lookup needs.

Implementation language

C++

C++, Go

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux
macOS

10.14 or later
Windows

with WSL 2 enabled

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Vector, Numeric and String

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

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'

yes

with RediSearch module

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language (q)

yes

with RediSQL module

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP API

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

Supported programming languages

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

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

C#
Java
PHP

C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

Transact SQL

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

Triggers

yes

with views

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

similar paradigm used for internal processing

through RedisGears

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Session Consistency
Tunable Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/synapse-analytics/sql-data-warehouse/sql-data-warehouse-table-constraints

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

rights management via user accounts

yes

using Azure authentication

yes

Role based access control and fine grained access rights

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
» more

Milvus is an open-source and cloud-native vector database built for production-ready...
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Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
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Highly available, versatile, and robust with millisecond latency. Supports batch...
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Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
» more

RAG: retrieval augmented generation Video media : video understanding, video deduplication....
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Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
» more

Milvus is trusted by thousands of enterprises, including PayPal, eBay, IKEA, LINE,...
» more

Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
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As of January 2024, 25k+ GitHub stars 10M+ downloads and installations 3k+ enterprise...
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Licensing and pricing models

upon request
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Milvus was released under the open-source Apache License 2.0 in October 2019. Fully-managed...
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.