DBMS > Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

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Our visitors often compare Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and Microsoft Azure SQL Database with PostgreSQL, Databricks and Amazon Aurora.

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

Primary database model

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	22.94
Rank	#26	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#2	Wide column stores

Score	75.45
Rank	#17	Overall
	#12	Relational DBMS

Website

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

Technical documentation

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

Developer

Microsoft

Initial release

2014

2010

Current release

V12

License

Commercial or Open Source

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

Data scheme

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

APIs and other access methods

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

Transact SQL

Triggers

JavaScript

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, with always 3 replicas available

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

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

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4 January 2021, Paul Andlinger, Matthias Gelbmann

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12 December 2019, Paul Andlinger

The popularity of cloud-based DBMSs has increased tenfold in four years
7 February 2017, Matthias Gelbmann

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Recent citations in the news

Microsoft Announces General Availability of Data API Builder for Azure Cosmos DB
6 July 2024, infoq.com

Share.Market redefines the investment experience with Microsoft Azure
13 September 2024, Microsoft

How to use Azure Cosmos DB in .Net
10 July 2024, InfoWorld

Microsoft’s new DocumentDB rethinks NoSQL on PostgreSQL
30 January 2025, InfoWorld

Crediclub saves 96% per month in audit processes and analyzes 150 meetings per hour with Azure
12 November 2024, Microsoft

provided by Google News

UBS innovates on Azure by transforming its critical workloads from mainframe into cloud native solutions
12 May 2025, Microsoft

Continuous Replication to Amazon RDS for SQL Server from Azure SQL
10 January 2025, Amazon Web Services

Native Vector Support in Azure SQL Database in Public Preview
16 November 2024, infoq.com

The year ahead for SQL Server: Ground to cloud to fabric
15 January 2025, Microsoft

Modernize your database with the consolidation and retirement of Azure Database Migration tools
12 September 2024, Microsoft

provided by Google News

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