DBMS > Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Realm vs. RocksDB

System Properties Comparison Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Realm vs. RocksDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

High performance Time Series DBMS

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Embeddable persistent key-value store optimized for fast storage (flash and RAM)

Primary database model

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Document store

Key-value store

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

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	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	3.65
Rank	#85	Overall
	#11	Key-value stores

Website

kx.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

realm.io

rocksdb.org

Technical documentation

code.kx.com

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

realm.io/docs

github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki

Developer

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Microsoft

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Facebook, Inc.

Initial release

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2019

2014

2013

Current release

3.6, May 2018

cloud service with continuous releases

8.11.4, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free 32-bit version

commercial

Open Source

BSD

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++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

schema-free

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

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

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

C++ API
Java API

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

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

C
C++
Go
Java
Perl
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

with views

yes

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

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

horizontal partitioning

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.

none

yes

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

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate 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

ACID

yes

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

In-Memory realm

yes

User concepts

Access control

rights management via user accounts

Azure Active Directory Authentication

yes

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.