DBMS > Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. Milvus vs. Vertica vs. XTDB

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. Milvus vs. Vertica vs. XTDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Elastic, large scale data warehouse service leveraging the broad eco-system of SQL Server

A DBMS designed for efficient storage of vector data and vector similarity searches

Cloud or off-cloud analytical database and query engine for structured and semi-structured streaming and batch data. Machine learning platform with built-in algorithms, data preparation capabilities, and model evaluation and management via SQL or Python.

A general purpose database with bitemporal SQL and Datalog and graph queries

Primary database model

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Column oriented

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS
Time Series 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	20.56
Rank	#31	Overall
	#19	Relational DBMS

Score	2.31
Rank	#113	Overall
	#3	Vector DBMS

Score	10.68
Rank	#43	Overall
	#27	Relational DBMS

Score	0.11
Rank	#343	Overall
	#46	Document stores

Website

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/services/synapse-analytics

milvus.io

www.vertica.com

github.com/xtdb/xtdb
www.xtdb.com

Technical documentation

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.microsoft.com/azure/synapse-analytics

milvus.io/docs/overview.md

vertica.com/documentation

www.xtdb.com/docs

Developer

Microsoft

OpenText

previously Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard

Juxt Ltd.

Initial release

2014

2016

2019

2005

2019

Current release

2.3.4, January 2024

12.0.3, January 2023

1.19, September 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

Limited community edition free

Open Source

MIT License

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

on-premises, all major clouds - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and containers

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Zilliz Cloud – Cloud-native service for Milvus

Implementation language

C++

C++, Go

C++

Clojure

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
macOS

10.14 or later
Windows

with WSL 2 enabled

Linux

All OS with a Java 8 (and higher) VM
Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Yes, but also semi-structure/unstructured data storage, and complex hierarchical data (like Parquet) stored and/or queried.

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

yes

Vector, Numeric and String

yes

yes, extensible-data-notation format

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

No Indexes Required. Different internal optimization strategy, but same functionality included.

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

Full 1999 standard plus machine learning, time series and geospatial. Over 650 functions.

limited SQL, making use of Apache Calcite

APIs and other access methods

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
Kafka Connector
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spark Connector
vSQL

character-based, interactive, front-end utility

HTTP REST
JDBC

Supported programming languages

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

C#
Java
PHP

C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

Clojure
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

Transact SQL

yes, PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, with minor differences

Triggers

JavaScript

yes, called Custom Alerts

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

Sharding

horizontal partitioning, hierarchical partitioning

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Multi-source replication

One, or more copies of data replicated across nodes, or object-store used for repository.

yes, each node contains all data

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Bi-directional Spark 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

Bounded Staleness
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Session Consistency
Tunable Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/synapse-analytics/sql-data-warehouse/sql-data-warehouse-table-constraints

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

yes, flexibel persistency by using storage technologies like Apache Kafka, RocksDB or LMDB

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

yes

Role based access control and fine grained access rights

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard; supports Kerberos, LDAP, Ident and hash

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Milvus is an open-source and cloud-native vector database built for production-ready...
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Deploy-anywhere database for large-scale analytical deployments. Deploy off-cloud,...
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Competitive advantages

Highly available, versatile, and robust with millisecond latency. Supports batch...
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Fast, scalable, and capable of high concurrency. Separation of compute/storage leverages...
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Typical application scenarios

RAG: retrieval augmented generation Video media : video understanding, video deduplication....
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Communication and network analytics, Embedded analytics, Fraud monitoring and Risk...
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Key customers

Milvus is trusted by thousands of enterprises, including PayPal, eBay, IKEA, LINE,...
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Abiba Systems, Adform, adMarketplace, AmeriPride, Anritsu, AOL, Avito, Auckland Transport,...
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Market metrics

As of January 2024, 25k+ GitHub stars 10M+ downloads and installations 3k+ enterprise...
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Licensing and pricing models

Milvus was released under the open-source Apache License 2.0 in October 2019. Fully-managed...
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Cost-based models and subscription-based models are both available. One license is...
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