DBMS > Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Redis vs. ScyllaDB vs. Solr

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Redis vs. ScyllaDB vs. Solr

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

Cassandra and DynamoDB compatible wide column store

A widely used distributed, scalable search engine based on Apache Lucene

Primary database model

Search engine

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Wide column store

Search engine

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

Key-value store

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	5.59
Rank	#63	Overall
	#7	Search engines

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	157.80
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Score	4.75
Rank	#68	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Score	42.91
Rank	#24	Overall
	#3	Search engines

Website

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

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

redis.com
redis.io

www.scylladb.com

solr.apache.org

Technical documentation

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

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

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

docs.scylladb.com

solr.apache.org/resources.html

Developer

Microsoft

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

ScyllaDB

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

2015

1989

2009

2015

2006

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

7.2.4, January 2024

ScyllaDB Open Source 5.4.1, January 2024

9.6.0, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license available

Open Source

Apache Version 2

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.

Aiven for Redis: Fully managed in-memory key-value store for all your caching and speedy lookup needs.

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
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

Linux

All OS with a Java VM

runs as a servlet in servlet container (e.g. Tomcat, Jetty is included)

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Dynamic Fields enables on-the-fly addition of new fields

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

yes

supports customizable data types and automatic typing

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

with RediSearch module

yes

cluster global secondary indices

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with RediSQL module

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

Solr Parallel SQL Interface

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

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

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

Proprietary protocol (CQL)

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

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

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

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

.Net
Erlang
Java
JavaScript
any language that supports sockets and either XML or JSON
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

yes, Lua

Java plugins

Triggers

yes

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

yes

User configurable commands triggered on index changes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

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

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

through RedisGears

spark-solr: github.com/lucidworks/spark-solr and streaming expressions to reduce

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

Eventual Consistency
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

optimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

Access rights for users can be defined per object

yes

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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