DBMS > Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. Virtuoso

System Properties Comparison Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. Virtuoso

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

High performance Time Series DBMS

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

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

Virtuoso is a multi-model hybrid-RDBMS that supports management of data represented as relational tables and/or property graphs

Primary database model

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Wide column store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Native XML DBMS
Relational DBMS
RDF store
Search engine

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Spatial DBMS

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

Spatial 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	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	4.48
Rank	#75	Overall
	#6	Wide column stores

Score	4.26
Rank	#78	Overall
	#13	Document stores
	#4	Graph DBMS
	#2	Native XML DBMS
	#42	Relational DBMS
	#2	RDF stores
	#9	Search engines

Website

kx.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

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

virtuoso.openlinksw.com

Technical documentation

code.kx.com

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

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

docs.openlinksw.com/virtuoso

Developer

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Microsoft

OpenLink Software

Initial release

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2014

2019

2012

1998

Current release

3.6, May 2018

cloud service with continuous releases

7.2.11, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free 32-bit version

commercial

Open Source

GPLv2, extended commercial license 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

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

schema-free

yes

SQL - Standard relational schema
RDF - Quad (S, P, O, G) or Triple (S, P, O)
XML - DTD, XML Schema
DAV - freeform filesystem objects, plus User Defined Types a/k/a Dynamic Extension Type

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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

yes

table attribute 'grouped'

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language (q)

SQL-like query language

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

SQL-92, SQL-200x, SQL-3, SQLX

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

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

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
GeoSPARQL
HTTP API
JDBC
Jena RDF API
ODBC
OLE DB
RDF4J API
RESTful HTTP API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SOAP webservices
SPARQL 1.1
WebDAV
XPath
XQuery
XSLT

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

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

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

.Net
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

JavaScript

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

yes

Virtuoso PL

Triggers

yes

with views

JavaScript

yes

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

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.

Chain, star, and bi-directional replication
Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

similar paradigm used for internal processing

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

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

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

optimistic locking

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Azure Active Directory Authentication

Access rights based on private key authentication or shared access signatures

Fine-grained Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) in addition to typical coarse-grained Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) according to SQL-standard. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
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Virtuoso is a modern multi-model RDBMS for managing data represented as tabular relations...
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Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
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Performance & Scale — as exemplified by DBpedia and the LOD Cloud it spawned, i.e.,...
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Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
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Used for — Analytics/BI Conceptual Data Virtualization Enterprise Knowledge Graphs...
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Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
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Broad use across enterprises and governments including — European Union (EU) US Government...
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Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
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Largest installed-base of Multi-Model RDBMS for AI-friendly Knowledge Graphs Platform...
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Licensing and pricing models

upon request
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Available in both Commercial Enterprise and Open Source (GPL v2) Editions Feature...
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