What is Cosmos DB good for

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What is Cosmos DB good for

In this Azure tutorial, we will discuss What is Cosmos DB good for. Along with this, we will also discuss the below topics.

  • Azure Cosmos DB is SaaS or PaaS
  • Azure Cosmos DB is an example of
  • Cosmos DB Advantages Disadvantages
  • When to use cosmos DB vs SQL server

What is Cosmos DB good for

Well, let’s discuss what are the uses of Azure Cosmos DB or the common uses of Azure Cosmos DB. Before moving to the actual topic, let’s discuss a few important points on why Azure Cosmos DB?.

Azure Cosmos DB is an excellent NoSQL database from Microsoft. It is the best because of its availability, consistency, throughput, etc.

This is the best service in the market that is distributed globally and provides you with the opportunity to utilize the comprehensive service level agreements.

Azure Cosmos DB is one of the best choices in case you are developing a serverless application.

If you want your application requires lesser response time and wants your application should scale rapidly and be available globally then going with Azure Cosmos DB is the right choice for you.

Most importantly, Azure Cosmos DB provides you with the support of different APIs that help you access your data easily and those APIs are SQL API, API for MongoDB, Table API, and Gremlin API, etc.

Here, you will get a flexible pricing model and along with that, you will also get 99.99% guarantees for availability, consistency, throughput, etc.

When you have the requirement to build an application that can serve more requests per day, then you have Azure Cosmos DB as a choice to fulfill your need.

Now, coming back to the topic of What is Cosmos DB good for, let’s discuss a few key use cases.

Azure Cosmos DB is good for web, IoT, mobile, and gaming applications where you need a very less response time and can serve more requests.

Best For Mobile and Web Applications

You can use Azure Cosmos DB for developing different mobile and web applications.

Easily, you can integrate Azure Cosmos DB with different third-party services based on your requirement.

Cosmos DB also provides the support of different SDKs that can help you to develop rich Android and iOS application with the help of Xamarin.

One of the best choices for social media application, meaning if you have a requirement to develop social media application then you can use Azure Cosmos DB that can help you to store the comments, charts, posts, etc easily in Cosmos DB without any complexity.

Another important point to remember here is data is indexed automatically in the case of Azure Cosmos DB that really helps you in case of immediate queries.

Since Azure Cosmos DB supports JSON format and can easily integrate with javascript, that helps you to represent the UI layout easily.

Good For Gaming application

A gaming application always needs a fast response, low latency and that’s where Azure Cosmos DB helps you to fulfill your needs by providing a fast database.

While playing the game, you will not feel any lags as the Azure Cosmos DB provides you with millisecond latencies for the read and write operations.

Another thing is Azure Cosmos DB provides you with automatic indexing that helps you to apply multiple filters quickly.

As a Game, Developer, you can easily implement the features like in-game chat messages, high-score leaderboards, etc with the help of Azure Cosmos DB.

Azure Cosmos DB, being a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) helps the Game developer to do their job quickly with less headache for setup and management work.

There is a list of games like Halo 5: Guardians, The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land, etc are using Azure Cosmos DB.

Good choice for E-commerce/Retail application

A very good choice to use Azure Cosmos DB for your E-commerce/Retail applications.

The benefit of handling multiple requests, less response time is the key in the case of E-commerce/Retail applications.

In these applications, you need to prepare the catalog data where you need to query the database for different properties like people, places, products, etc frequently and you need a fast database to fulfill this need and here is the Azure Cosmos DB that can help you with these benefits.

Another important benefit of the Azure Cosmos DB is, it provides you with hierarchical data and flexible schemas that can help you to easily store the data for your Product catalog.

Cosmos DB Advantages Disadvantages

Well, let’s discuss the pros and cons of Azure Cosmos DB.

Advantages

  1. Easy to use and instantly scalable (auto scalable) that helps a lot to the larger businesses.
  2. A Fast database.
  3. Globally distributed.
  4. Multi-model database.
  5. Can process your query faster.
  6. It is highly available.
  7. Low latency Guaranteed.
  8. You can access it with the help of different APIs.
  9. Auto indexing and makes the life of the developer easy.
  10. High performance.
  11. In case of any disater recovery, it has cool features that you can utilize.

Disadvantages

  1. It is a bit expensive.
  2. You need to struggle a bit while migrating from DBs to Azure Cosmos DB.

When to use cosmos DB vs SQL server

Are you confused? When to use Azure Cosmos DB and when to use SQL server?. Now let’s discuss when to use cosmos DB vs SQL server and along with that the difference between Cosmos DB and SQL server.

When to use cosmos DB When to use SQL server
If you want to build a high-performance application.When you want to use a simple RDBMS for your application.
When you have the requirement to use a no SQL database.If you have a low budget, You can get it with a very little budget as compared to Azure cosmos DB.
When your application needs a fast, stable, and large database.When your requirement is to go for a simple, user-friendly database.
If your requirement is to use a globally distributed and multi-model database.
When you have a bit more budget as the cosmos DB is a bit expensive as compared to SQL server.

Now, let’s discuss the basic difference between Azure Cosmos DB and SQL Server.

Azure Cosmos DB SQL Server
It is a No SQL database.It is a relational database.
It is auto-scalable.Quite easy to configure and can easily integrate with Visual Studio and .Net.
For data analysis, you can easily integrate with  MSBI.
It is a high speed compared to SQL server.
It is a bit expensive.It is cheaper as compared with Azure Cosmos DB.
Low Latency.
Auto indexing
Can easily run and manage under Azure Cloud.
It is easy to use.
Supports data in JSON format.

Azure Cosmos DB is SaaS or PaaS

Azure Cosmos DB is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) from Microsoft Azure.

It is a fully managed NoSQL database service from Microsoft.

Azure Cosmos DB is an example of

Azure Cosmos DB is an example of a platform as a service (PaaS) offering from Microsoft and a NoSQL database service that is cloud-based.

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Wrapping Up

In this article, we have discussed What is Cosmos DB good for, and along with that we have also discussed the below topics.

  • Azure Cosmos DB is SaaS or PaaS
  • Azure Cosmos DB is an example of
  • Cosmos DB Advantages Disadvantages
  • When to use cosmos DB vs SQL server

Hope you have enjoyed this article !!!