DBMS > Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. OpenSearch

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. OpenSearch

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

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

A Wide Column Store for rapid development using massive semi-structured datasets

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

Primary database model

column oriented

Secondary database models

Document store

If 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

this 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

support 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

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer/time-series-analysis

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Vector DBMS

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

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	4.48
Rank	#75	Overall
	#6	Wide column stores

Score	16.36
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Website

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

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

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/tables

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

Technical documentation

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer

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

opensearch.org/docs/latest

Developer

Microsoft

Amazon Web Services

Initial release

2019

2010

2012

2021

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

V12

2.5.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 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.

Aiven for OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.

Implementation language

C++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

Data scheme

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

bool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-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

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

Microsoft SQL Server communication protocol (MS-TDS)
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP API

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PowerShell
Python
R

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

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Transact SQL

yes

Triggers

yes

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/management/updatepolicy

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

yes, with always 3 replicas available

yes

implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Spark connector (open source): github.com/Azure/azure-kusto-spark

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

optimistic locking

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.

User concepts

Access control

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights based on private key authentication or shared access signatures

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
» more

Competitive advantages

Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
» more

Typical application scenarios

The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
» more

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