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DBMS > Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SurrealDB vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SurrealDB vs. TimescaleDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameMicrosoft Azure AI Search  Xexclude from comparisonMicrosoft Azure Data Explorer  Xexclude from comparisonSurrealDB  Xexclude from comparisonTimescaleDB  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionSearch-as-a-service for web and mobile app developmentFully managed big data interactive analytics platformA fully ACID transactional, developer-friendly, multi-model DBMSA time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL
Primary database modelSearch engineRelational DBMS infocolumn orientedDocument store
Graph DBMS
Time Series DBMS
Secondary database modelsVector DBMSDocument store infoIf 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 infothis 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 infosupport 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 infosee docs.microsoft.com/­en-us/­azure/­data-explorer/­time-series-analysis
Relational DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score5.28
Rank#61  Overall
#7  Search engines
Score3.00
Rank#86  Overall
#47  Relational DBMS
Score1.08
Rank#176  Overall
#30  Document stores
#16  Graph DBMS
Score3.59
Rank#72  Overall
#5  Time Series DBMS
Websiteazure.microsoft.com/­en-us/­services/­searchazure.microsoft.com/­services/­data-explorersurrealdb.comwww.timescale.com
Technical documentationlearn.microsoft.com/­en-us/­azure/­searchdocs.microsoft.com/­en-us/­azure/­data-explorersurrealdb.com/­docsdocs.timescale.com
DeveloperMicrosoftMicrosoftSurrealDB LtdTimescale
Initial release2015201920222017
Current releaseV1cloud service with continuous releasesv1.5.0, May 20242.15.0, May 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialcommercialOpen SourceOpen Source infoApache 2.0
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesyesnono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

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Implementation languageRustC
Server operating systemshostedhostedLinux
macOS
Windows
Linux
OS X
Windows
Data schemeyesFixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)schema-freeyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyes infobool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/­en-us/­azure/­kusto/­query/­scalar-data-typesyesnumerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.noyesyes
Secondary indexesyesall fields are automatically indexedyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLnoKusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subsetSQL-like query languageyes infofull PostgreSQL SQL syntax
APIs and other access methodsRESTful HTTP APIMicrosoft SQL Server communication protocol (MS-TDS)
RESTful HTTP API
GraphQL
RESTful HTTP API
WebSocket
ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects
Supported programming languagesC#
Java
JavaScript
Python
.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PowerShell
Python
R
Deno
Go
JavaScript (Node.js)
Rust
.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java infoJDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresnoYes, possible languages: KQL, Python, Ruser defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell
Triggersnoyes infosee docs.microsoft.com/­en-us/­azure/­kusto/­management/­updatepolicyyes
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesSharding infoImplicit feature of the cloud serviceSharding infoImplicit feature of the cloud serviceyes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesyes infoImplicit feature of the cloud serviceyes infoImplicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas info
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnoSpark connector (open source): github.com/­Azure/­azure-kusto-sparknono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyEventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integritynonoyes
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of datanonoACIDACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.nonono
User concepts infoAccess controlyes infousing Azure authenticationAzure Active Directory Authenticationyes, based on authentication and database rulesfine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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More resources
Microsoft Azure AI SearchMicrosoft Azure Data ExplorerSurrealDBTimescaleDB
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