DBMS > Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. Splunk

System Properties Comparison Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. Splunk

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

High performance Time Series DBMS

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

Analytics Platform for Big Data

Primary database model

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Secondary database models

Relational 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

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	7.73
Rank	#45	Overall
	#2	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	3.28
Rank	#83	Overall
	#45	Relational DBMS

Score	807.76
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	3.50
Rank	#81	Overall
	#44	Relational DBMS

Score	93.02
Rank	#13	Overall
	#2	Search engines

Website

kx.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

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

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

www.splunk.com

Technical documentation

code.kx.com

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

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

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk

Developer

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Microsoft

SAP

formerly Sybase

Splunk Inc.

Initial release

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2019

1989

1992

2003

Current release

3.6, May 2018

cloud service with continuous releases

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

17, July 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free 32-bit version

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Limited free edition and free developer edition available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

table attribute 'grouped'

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language (q)

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

Splunk Search Processing Language for search commands

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

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

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

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

HTTP REST

Supported programming languages

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

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

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

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

C#
Java
JavaScript
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

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

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

yes

Triggers

yes

with views

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

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes

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

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

Multi-source replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

similar paradigm used for internal processing

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

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

A 'Transaction' in Splunk has a different meaning: grouping related events into a single one for later searching

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

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

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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