DBMS > Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. mSQL vs. OpenSearch vs. Oracle vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. mSQL vs. OpenSearch vs. Oracle vs. Sphinx

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

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

Widely used RDBMS

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

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

Vector DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

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

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	1.27
Rank	#169	Overall
	#76	Relational DBMS

Score	16.03
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Score	1244.08
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	5.95
Rank	#55	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

www.oracle.com/database

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

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

opensearch.org/docs/latest

docs.oracle.com/en/database

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Microsoft

Hughes Technologies

Amazon Web Services

Oracle

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2019

1994

2021

1980

2001

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

4.4, October 2021

2.5.0, January 2023

23c, September 2023

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free licenses can be provided

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

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.

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Implementation language

Java

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

schema-free

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

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

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

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

SQL-like query language

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

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

JDBC
ODBC

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

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

C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

yes

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

Triggers

yes

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

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Sharding

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

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.

none

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

none

Eventual Consistency

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

User concepts

Access control

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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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