Choosing between PartiQL vs U-SQL

Question

I was going through the article here : https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/announcing-partiql-one-query-language-for-all-your-data/

It looks like "PartiQL" is similar like U-SQL provided by Microsoft. Here it is : https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-lake-analytics/data-lake-analytics-u-sql-get-started

Is there anyone using "PartiQL" today? What are the differences between these two. Or, is it like, if its AWS then "PartiQL" and if Azure then its U-SQL?

Answer 1

Having had a quick read through the PartiQL article, it does indeed seem similar in principle to U-SQL on the face of it. However you should know that U-SQL has not meaningfully moved on since June 2018. Read into that what you will.

Therefore, in my humble opinion and reading between the lines a little, I personally would not be starting new projects in 2019 with U-SQL. A considerably better option would be Databricks, an Apache Spark-based platform available on both AWS and Azure, offering you SQL, Scala, Java, Python and R as language choices plus that multi-product connectivity.

So a more meaningful comparison might be PartiQL versus Databricks. One potential upside to Databricks is it is present in AWS and Azure where PartiQL is not (implying lock-in).

Generate for yourself the illusion of cloud-agnostic designs.