DBMS > Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RDF4J vs. TiDB

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RDF4J vs. TiDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

TiDB is an open source distributed SQL database that supports Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP) workloads. It is MySQL compatible and features horizontal scalability, strong consistency, and high availability.

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

Document store

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

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.74
Rank	#222	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	4.25
Rank	#74	Overall
	#40	Relational DBMS

Website

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

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

rdf4j.org

pingcap.com

Technical documentation

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

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

rdf4j.org/documentation

docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable

Developer

Microsoft

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

PingCAP, Inc.

Initial release

2019

1989

2004

2016

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

8.1.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

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.

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.

TiDB Cloud: Fully-managed TiDB Service. Bring everything great about TiDB to the cloud.

Implementation language

C++

Java

Go, Rust

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

RDF Schemas

yes

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

APIs and other access methods

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

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

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

GORM
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
SQLAlchemy

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

Java
PHP
Python

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

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

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

none

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

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, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

Using Raft consensus algorithm to ensure data replication with strong consistency among multiple replicas.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

yes

with TiSpark Connector

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

full support since version 6.6

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

yes

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

TiDB is an advanced open-source, distributed SQL database for modern application...
» more

Competitive advantages

- HORIZONTAL SCALING : TiDB grants total transparency into your data workloads without...
» more

Typical application scenarios

TiDB is ideal for transactional applications that require extreme scalability and...
» more

Key customers

Block, Pinterest, Catalyst, Bolt, Flipkart, Capcom, Shopee (E-commerce), JD Cloud...
» more

Market metrics

34K+ GitHub stars 5K+ members in TiDB Community Slack 1K+ community contributors...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

TiDB Community : Free open source software (Apache 2.0) TiDB Self-Hosted : Enterprise...
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.