DBMS > Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Oracle vs. Sphinx vs. StarRocks vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Oracle vs. Sphinx vs. StarRocks vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Widely used RDBMS

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

An open source, high-performance columnar analytical database that enables real-time, multi-dimensional, and highly concurrent data analytics

Forked from Apache Doris

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

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

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	1244.08
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	5.95
Rank	#55	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	0.93
Rank	#198	Overall
	#93	Relational DBMS

Score	1.52
Rank	#153	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.oracle.com/database

sphinxsearch.com

www.starrocks.io

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

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

docs.oracle.com/en/database

sphinxsearch.com/docs

docs.starrocks.io/en-us/latest/introduction/StarRocks_intro

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Microsoft

Oracle

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

The Linux Foundation

since Feb 2023

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2019

1980

2001

2020

2019

Current release

cloud service with continuous releases

23c, September 2023

3.5.1, February 2023

2.5.3, March 2023

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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 and C++

C++

C++, Java

Server operating systems

hosted

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

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

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

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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

full-text index on all search fields

yes

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

yes

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

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

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Proprietary protocol

JDBC
MySQL protocol

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

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

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

Java

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

user defined functions

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

Sharding

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

horizontal partitioning (by range and hash)

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.

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

yes

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

Immediate Consistency

Eventual 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.

yes

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'

yes

User concepts

Access control

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Role based access control and fine grained access rights

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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