DBMS > Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. SAP IQ vs. Stardog vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. SAP IQ vs. Stardog vs. TimescaleDB

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

Columnar RDBMS optimized for Big Data analytics

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

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

column-oriented

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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	2.75
Rank	#104	Overall
	#53	Relational DBMS

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

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

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

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sybase-iq-big-data-management.html

www.stardog.com

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

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

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_IQ

docs.stardog.com

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Microsoft

SAP, formerly Sybase

Stardog-Union

Timescale

Initial release

2014

2010

1994

2010

2017

Current release

V12

16.1 SPS04, April 2019

7.3.0, May 2020

2.13.0, November 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

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

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

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

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

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

C
C#
C++
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

Transact SQL

yes

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

JavaScript

yes

via event handlers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

shared disk or shared nothing architectures with SAP IQ Multiplexer

none

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, with always 3 replicas available

SAP/Sybase Replication Server

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

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

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

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

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

Access rights for users and roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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