DBMS > Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Snowflake vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Snowflake vs. TimescaleDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

High performance Time Series DBMS

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

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

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Search engine

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	7.71
Rank	#49	Overall
	#2	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	5.52
Rank	#59	Overall
	#6	Search engines

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	4.46
Rank	#71	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Website

kx.com

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

www.snowflake.com

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

code.kx.com

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

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Timescale

Initial release

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2015

2014

2017

Current release

3.6, May 2018

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free 32-bit version

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

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

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language (q)

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

RESTful HTTP API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

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

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

with views

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

similar paradigm used for internal processing

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

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

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.

yes

User concepts

Access control

rights management via user accounts

yes

using Azure authentication

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
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Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
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Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
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Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
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Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
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Licensing and pricing models

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