DBMS > Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RavenDB vs. TinkerGraph

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RavenDB vs. TinkerGraph

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database

A lightweight, in-memory graph engine that serves as a reference implementation of the TinkerPop3 API

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

Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

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

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	20.56
Rank	#31	Overall
	#19	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.92
Rank	#101	Overall
	#18	Document stores

Score	0.08
Rank	#348	Overall
	#35	Graph DBMS

Website

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

azure.microsoft.com/services/synapse-analytics

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

ravendb.net

tinkerpop.apache.org/docs/current/reference/#tinkergraph-gremlin

Technical documentation

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

docs.microsoft.com/azure/synapse-analytics

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

ravendb.net/docs

Developer

Microsoft

Hibernating Rhinos

Initial release

2019

2016

1989

2010

2009

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.4, July 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license available

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

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows

Data scheme

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

schema-free

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

SQL

Support of SQL

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

SQL-like query language (RQL)

APIs and other access methods

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

.NET Client API
F# Client API
Go Client API
Java Client API
NodeJS Client API
PHP Client API
Python Client API
RESTful HTTP API

TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

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

C#
Java
PHP

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

Groovy
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Transact SQL

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

yes

Triggers

yes

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Sharding

none

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

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Default ACID transactions on the local node (eventually consistent across the cluster). Atomic operations with cluster-wide ACID transactions. Eventual consistency for indexes and full-text search indexes.

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID, Cluster-wide transaction available

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

User concepts

Access control

Azure Active Directory Authentication

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Authorization levels configured per client per database

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