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

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	0.21
Rank	#322	Overall
	#29	Time Series DBMS

Score	0.50
Rank	#258	Overall
	#41	Document stores
	#120	Relational DBMS

Score	1.36
Rank	#161	Overall
	#75	Relational DBMS

Website

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

quasar.ai

www.sequoiadb.com

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

Technical documentation

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

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

doc.quasar.ai/master

www.sequoiadb.com/en/index.php?m=Files&a=index

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

Developer

Microsoft

quasardb

Sequoiadb Ltd.

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

2014

2019

2009

2013

1998

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

3.14.1, January 2024

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Free community edition, Non-profit organizations and non-commercial usage are eligible for free licenses

Open Source

Server: AGPL; Client: Apache V2

commercial

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

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

yes

bool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types

yes

integer and binary

yes

oid, date, timestamp, binary, regex

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

with tags

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

SQL-like query language

yes

APIs and other access methods

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

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

HTTP API

proprietary protocol using JSON

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PowerShell
Python
R

.Net
C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R

.Net
C++
Java
PHP
Python

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

JavaScript

PL/SQL

Triggers

JavaScript

yes

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

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

consistent hashing

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

Source-replica replication with selectable replication factor

Source-replica replication

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*

Spark connector (open source): github.com/Azure/azure-kusto-spark

with Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

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

Document is locked during a transaction

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using LevelDB

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Transient mode

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Azure Active Directory Authentication

Cryptographically strong user authentication and audit trail

simple password-based access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.