DBMS > Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. NCache vs. Sphinx vs. Stardog

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. NCache vs. Sphinx vs. Stardog

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

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

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

Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization

Primary database model

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

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

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	0.94
Rank	#195	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	2.02
Rank	#123	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Website

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

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

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

sphinxsearch.com

www.stardog.com

Technical documentation

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

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

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

sphinxsearch.com/docs

docs.stardog.com

Developer

Microsoft

Alachisoft

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Stardog-Union

Initial release

2014

2010

2005

2001

2010

Current release

V12

5.3.3, April 2024

3.5.1, February 2023

7.3.0, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

commercial

60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students

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++

C#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

C++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

yes

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

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

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

full-text index on all search fields

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server

APIs and other access methods

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

Proprietary protocol

GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Jena RDF API
OWL
RDF4J API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SNARL
SPARQL
Spring Data
Stardog Studio
TinkerPop 3

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

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

Transact SQL

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Triggers

JavaScript

yes

Notifications

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, with always 3 replicas available

yes, with selectable consistency level

none

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

yes

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

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

Access rights for users and roles

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

NCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
» more

Competitive advantages

NCache is 100% .NET/ .NET Core based which fully supports ASP.NET Core Sessions ,...
» more

Typical application scenarios

NCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
» more

Key customers

Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
» more

Market metrics

Market Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
» more

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.