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DBMS > Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

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Our visitors often compare Microsoft Azure Data Explorer and Microsoft Azure SQL Database with Databricks, Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and Snowflake.

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameMicrosoft Azure Data Explorer  Xexclude from comparisonMicrosoft Azure SQL Database infoformerly SQL Azure  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionFully managed big data interactive analytics platformDatabase as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server
Primary database modelRelational DBMS infocolumn orientedRelational DBMS
Secondary database modelsDocument store infoIf a column is of type dynamic docs.microsoft.com/­en-us/­azure/­kusto/­query/­scalar-data-types/­dynamic then it's possible to add arbitrary JSON documents in this cell
Event Store infothis 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 infosupport 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 infosee docs.microsoft.com/­en-us/­azure/­data-explorer/­time-series-analysis
Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score2.94
Rank#85  Overall
#46  Relational DBMS
Score75.37
Rank#16  Overall
#11  Relational DBMS
Websiteazure.microsoft.com/­services/­data-explorerazure.microsoft.com/­en-us/­products/­azure-sql/­database
Technical documentationdocs.microsoft.com/­en-us/­azure/­data-explorerdocs.microsoft.com/­en-us/­azure/­azure-sql
DeveloperMicrosoftMicrosoft
Initial release20192010
Current releasecloud service with continuous releasesV12
License infoCommercial or Open Sourcecommercialcommercial
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesyes
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
Implementation languageC++
Server operating systemshostedhosted
Data schemeFixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)yes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyes infobool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/­en-us/­azure/­kusto/­query/­scalar-data-typesyes
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.yesyes
Secondary indexesall fields are automatically indexedyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLKusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subsetyes
APIs and other access methodsMicrosoft SQL Server communication protocol (MS-TDS)
RESTful HTTP API
ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Supported programming languages.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PowerShell
Python
R
.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresYes, possible languages: KQL, Python, RTransact SQL
Triggersyes infosee docs.microsoft.com/­en-us/­azure/­kusto/­management/­updatepolicyyes
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesSharding infoImplicit feature of the cloud service
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesyes infoImplicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.yes, with always 3 replicas available
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsSpark connector (open source): github.com/­Azure/­azure-kusto-sparkno
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemEventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integritynoyes
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of datanoACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.no
User concepts infoAccess controlAzure Active Directory Authenticationfine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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More resources
Microsoft Azure Data ExplorerMicrosoft Azure SQL Database infoformerly SQL Azure
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Recent citations in the news

Universal Destinations & Experiences proactively improves guest satisfaction with Azure Data Explorer
14 February 2025, Microsoft

Log and Telemetry Analytics Performance Benchmark
16 August 2022, Gigaom

Azure Data Explorer: Log and telemetry analytics benchmark
16 August 2022, Microsoft Azure

Azure Data Explorer Supports Native Ingestion from Amazon S3
7 September 2022, infoq.com

Microsoft announces general availability of Azure Data Explorer and Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2
7 February 2019, VentureBeat

provided by Google News

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

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

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

Announcing Microsoft SQL Server 2025: Enterprise AI-ready database from ground to cloud
19 November 2024, Microsoft

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

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