Describe capabilities and features of Azure Cosmos DB

Question 1

Azure Cosmos DB

Answer 1

Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database service provided by Microsoft Azure. It is designed to enable the development of highly responsive and scalable applications with low-latency data access worldwide

-Supports multiple application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable developers to use the programming semantics of many common kinds of data store to work with data in a Cosmos DB database.
-Cosmos DB uses indexes and partitioning to provide fast read and write performance and can scale to massive volumes of data.
-You can enable multi-region writes, adding the Azure regions of your choice to your Cosmos DB account so that globally distributed users can each work with data in their local replica.

-Cosmos DB interface is a web interface to explore and interact with your Cosmos DB accounts. (Data Explorer)

Question 2

Use Cases

Answer 2

Cosmos DB is highly suitable for the following scenarios:

-IoT and telematics: These systems typically ingest large amounts of data in frequent bursts of activity. Cosmos DB can accept and store this information quickly
-Retail and marketing: Microsoft uses Cosmos DB for its own e-commerce platforms that run as part of Windows Store and Xbox Live.
-Gaming: The database tier is a crucial component of gaming applications. Modern games perform graphical processing on mobile/console clients, but rely on the cloud to deliver customized and personalized content like in-game stats, social media integration, and high-score leaderboards.
-Web and mobile applications: Suited for modeling social interactions, integrating with third-party services, and for building rich personalized experiences

Question 3

Azure Cosmos DB APIs

Answer 3

Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft’s fully managed and serverless distributed database for applications of any size or scale, with support for both relational and non-relational workloads. Developers can build and migrate applications fast using their preferred open source database engines, including PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Apache Cassandra.

-Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL is Microsoft’s native non-relational service for working with the document data model. It manages data in JSON document format, and despite being a NoSQL data storage solution, uses SQL syntax to work with the data.

-Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB enables developers to use MongoDB client libraries and code to work with data in Azure Cosmos DB.

-Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL is a native PostgreSQL, globally distributed relational database that automatically shards data to help you build highly scalable apps.

-Azure Cosmos DB for Table is used to work with data in key-value tables, similar to Azure Table Storage. It offers greater scalability and performance than Azure Table Storage.

-Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Cassandra is compatible with Apache Cassandra, which is a popular open source database that uses a column-family storage structure.

-Azure Cosmos DB for Apache Gremlin is used with data in a graph structure

All these NoSQL engines specific capacity:
-Provisioned throughput (pay for guarantee of capacity)
-Serverless (pay for what you use)