DBMS > Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. ScyllaDB vs. Sphinx vs. Splice Machine

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. ScyllaDB vs. Sphinx vs. Splice Machine

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

Cassandra and DynamoDB compatible wide column store

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

Open-Source SQL RDBMS for Operational and Analytical use cases with native Machine Learning, powered by Hadoop and Spark

Primary database model

Search engine

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Wide column store

Search engine

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

Spatial DBMS

Key-value store

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	4.08
Rank	#76	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Score	5.95
Rank	#55	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	0.54
Rank	#252	Overall
	#115	Relational DBMS

Website

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

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.scylladb.com

sphinxsearch.com

splicemachine.com

Technical documentation

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

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.scylladb.com

sphinxsearch.com/docs

splicemachine.com/how-it-works

Developer

Microsoft

ScyllaDB

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Splice Machine

Initial release

2015

2014

2015

2001

2014

Current release

ScyllaDB Open Source 5.4.1, January 2024

3.5.1, February 2023

3.1, March 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

AGPL 3.0, 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.

Scylla Cloud: Create real-time applications that run at global scale with Scylla Cloud, the industry’s most powerful NoSQL DBaaS

Implementation language

C++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON 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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

cluster global secondary indices

yes

full-text index on all search fields

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

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

Proprietary protocol (CQL)

compatible with CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
RESTful HTTP API (DynamoDB compatible)
Thrift

Proprietary protocol

JDBC
Native Spark Datasource
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

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

For CQL interface: C#, C++, Clojure, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala
For DynamoDB interface: .Net, ColdFusion, Erlang, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
R
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

yes, Lua

yes

Java

Triggers

JavaScript

yes

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

Shared Nothhing Auto-Sharding, Columnar Partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Yes, via Full Spark Integration

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
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

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

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

in-memory tables

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes

using Azure authentication

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users, groups and roles according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

ScyllaDB is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale. It’s adopted...
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Competitive advantages

Highly-performant (efficiently utilizes full resources of a node and network; millions...
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Typical application scenarios

ScyllaDB is ideal for applications that require high throughput and low latency at...
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Key customers

Discord, Epic Games, Expedia, Zillow, Comcast, Disney+ Hotstar, Samsung, ShareChat,...
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Market metrics

ScyllaDB typically offers ~75% total cost of ownership savings, with ~5X higher throughput...
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Licensing and pricing models

ScyllaDB Open Source - free open source software (AGPL) ScyllaDB Enterprise - subscription-based...
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