What does it mean that Azure Cosmos DB is multi-model?

Cosmos DB is a single NoSQL data engine, an evolution of Document DB. When you create a container (“database instance”) you choose the most relevant API for your use case which optimises the way you interact with the underling data store and how the data is persisted in to that store.

So, depending on the API chosen, it projects the desired model (graph, column, key value or document) on to the underlying store.

You can only use one API against a container, multiple are not possible due to the way the data is stored and retrieved. The API dictates the storage model – graph, key value, column etc, but they all map back on to the same technology under the hood.

Multi-model, multi-API support

Azure Cosmos DB natively supports multiple data models including documents, key-value, graph, and column-family. The core content-model of Cosmos DB’s database engine is based on atom-record-sequence (ARS). Atoms consist of a small set of primitive types like string, bool, and number. Records are structs composed of these types. Sequences are arrays consisting of atoms, records, or sequences. The database engine can efficiently translate and project different data models onto the ARS-based data model. The core data model of Cosmos DB is natively accessible from dynamically typed programming languages and can be exposed as-is as JSON.

The service also supports popular database APIs for data access and querying. Cosmos DB’s database engine currently supports DocumentDB SQL, MongoDB, Azure Tables (preview), and Gremlin (preview). You can continue to build applications using popular OSS APIs and get all the benefits of a battle-tested and fully managed, globally distributed database service.

This article is referenced here;

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44304947/what-does-it-mean-that-azure-cosmos-db-is-multi-model

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Author: Shahzad Khan

Software developer / Architect