DB-EnginesextremeDB - solve IoT connectivity disruptionsEnglish
Deutsch
Knowledge Base of Relational and NoSQL Database Management Systemsprovided by Redgate Software

DBMS > Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server

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

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

Our visitors often compare Microsoft Azure Data Explorer and Microsoft SQL Server with Databricks, InfluxDB and Elasticsearch.

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameMicrosoft Azure Data Explorer  Xexclude from comparisonMicrosoft SQL Server  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionFully managed big data interactive analytics platformMicrosofts flagship relational DBMS
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
Score785.01
Rank#3  Overall
#3  Relational DBMS
Websiteazure.microsoft.com/­services/­data-explorerwww.microsoft.com/­en-us/­sql-server
Technical documentationdocs.microsoft.com/­en-us/­azure/­data-explorerlearn.microsoft.com/­en-US/­sql/­sql-server
DeveloperMicrosoftMicrosoft
Initial release20191989
Current releasecloud service with continuous releasesSQL Server 2022, November 2022
License infoCommercial or Open Sourcecommercialcommercial inforestricted free version is available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesno
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.
Implementation languageC++
Server operating systemshostedLinux
Windows
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
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)
Supported programming languages.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PowerShell
Python
R
C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresYes, possible languages: KQL, Python, RTransact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java
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 servicetables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation
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, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition
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.noyes
User concepts infoAccess controlAzure Active Directory Authenticationfine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

Related products and services

We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources
Microsoft Azure Data ExplorerMicrosoft SQL Server
DB-Engines blog posts

MySQL is the DBMS of the Year 2019
3 January 2020, Matthias Gelbmann, Paul Andlinger

The struggle for the hegemony in Oracle's database empire
2 May 2017, Paul Andlinger

Microsoft SQL Server is the DBMS of the Year
4 January 2017, Matthias Gelbmann, Paul Andlinger

show all

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

How to Recover Deleted Data from SQL Server without Backup
22 April 2025, Infosecurity Magazine

Why SQL Server Is Still Worth It
24 March 2025, Redmondmag.com

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

SQL Server 2019 installation for Lab
27 January 2025, Spiceworks Community

Powering up: Abusing Power Apps to compromise on-prem servers
22 April 2025, IBM

provided by Google News



Share this page

Featured Products

RaimaDB logo

RaimaDB, embedded database for mission-critical applications. When performance, footprint and reliability matters.
Try RaimaDB for free.

Datastax Astra logo

Bring all your data to Generative AI applications with vector search enabled by the most scalable
vector database available.
Try for Free

Neo4j logo

See for yourself how a graph database can make your life easier.
Use Neo4j online for free.

Milvus logo

Vector database designed for GenAI, fully equipped for enterprise implementation.
Try Managed Milvus for Free

SingleStore logo

The data platform to build your intelligent applications.
Try it free.

Present your product here