DBMS > Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NSDb vs. Sphinx vs. Tarantool

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NSDb vs. Sphinx vs. Tarantool

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Scalable, High-performance Time Series DBMS designed for Real-time Analytics on top of Kubernetes

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

In-memory computing platform with a flexible data schema for efficiently building high-performance applications

Primary database model

Search engine

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Time Series DBMS

Search engine

Document store
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

Spatial DBMS

with Tarantool/GIS extension

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

Score	5.52
Rank	#59	Overall
	#6	Search engines

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	0.08
Rank	#369	Overall
	#40	Time Series DBMS

Score	5.95
Rank	#55	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	1.67
Rank	#143	Overall
	#25	Document stores
	#25	Key-value stores
	#65	Relational DBMS

Website

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

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

nsdb.io

sphinxsearch.com

www.tarantool.io

Technical documentation

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

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

nsdb.io/Architecture

sphinxsearch.com/docs

www.tarantool.io/en/doc

Developer

Microsoft

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2015

2014

2017

2001

2008

Current release

3.5.1, February 2023

2.10.0, May 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

BSD-2, source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Tarantool Enterprise

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Java, Scala

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
macOS

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

BSD
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Flexible data schema: relational definition for tables with ability to store json-like documents in columns

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

yes: int, bigint, decimal, string

string, double, decimal, uuid, integer, blob, boolean, datetime

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

full-text index on all search fields

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

Full-featured ANSI SQL support

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

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

gRPC
HTTP REST
WebSocket

Proprietary protocol

Open binary protocol

Supported programming languages

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

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

Java
Scala

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

C
C#
C++
Erlang
Go
Java
JavaScript
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Rust

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

Lua, C and SQL stored procedures

Triggers

JavaScript

yes, before/after data modification events, on replication events, client session events

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Sharding, partitioned with virtual buckets by user defined affinity key. Live resharding for scale up and scale down without maintenance downtime.

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Asynchronous replication with multi-master option
Configurable replication topology (full-mesh, chain, star)
Synchronous quorum replication (with Raft)

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

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

Casual consistency across sharding partitions
Eventual consistency within replicaset partition

when using asyncronous replication
Immediate Consistency within single instance
Sequential consistency including linearizable read within replicaset partition

when using Raft

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

ACID, with serializable isolation and linearizable read (within partition); Configurable MVCC (within partition); No cross-shard distributed transactions

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, cooperative multitasking

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Using Apache Lucene

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

yes, write ahead logging

In-memory capabilities

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

yes, full featured in-memory storage engine with persistence

User concepts

Access control

yes

using Azure authentication

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Access Control Lists
Mutual TLS authentication for Tarantol Enterprise
Password based authentication
Role-based access control (RBAC) and LDAP for Tarantol Enterprise
Users and Roles

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