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R Lang VS Azure Databricks

Compare R Lang VS Azure Databricks and see what are their differences

R Lang logo R Lang

R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.

Azure Databricks logo Azure Databricks

Azure Databricks is a fast, easy, and collaborative Apache Spark-based big data analytics service designed for data science and data engineering.
  • R Lang Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-10-24
  • Azure Databricks Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-02

R Lang features and specs

  • Comprehensive Statistical Analysis
    R is specifically designed for statistical analysis and data visualization. It offers a wide array of statistical tests, models, and other quantitative techniques.
  • Extensive Package Ecosystem
    The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) hosts thousands of packages, making it easy to extend the language’s capabilities with specialized tools and libraries.
  • Data Visualization
    R excels at producing high-quality plots and charts through packages like ggplot2 and lattice, providing powerful tools for data visualization.
  • Strong Community Support
    R has a large and active user community that contributes to forums, documentation, and packages, facilitating easier troubleshooting and knowledge sharing.
  • Open Source
    R is open-source, meaning it is free to use and has a high level of transparency. Users can inspect, modify, and enhance the source code.

Possible disadvantages of R Lang

  • Memory Consumption
    R can consume a significant amount of memory, particularly with large datasets, which can lead to performance issues.
  • Learning Curve
    R has a steep learning curve for beginners, especially for those without a strong background in statistics or programming.
  • Speed
    R is interpreted and can be slower than compiled languages like C++ or Java, especially for computationally-intensive tasks.
  • Less Optimal for General-Purpose Programming
    Although R excels at statistical computing, it is less suited for general-purpose programming tasks compared to languages like Python or Java.
  • Inconsistent Function Names and Syntax
    Because R's packages are often developed independently, there can be inconsistencies in function names and syntax, making it harder for users to seamlessly work across different packages.

Azure Databricks features and specs

  • Scalability
    Azure Databricks enables easy scaling of workloads up or down, allowing users to handle large volumes of data and perform distributed processing efficiently.
  • Integration
    Seamlessly integrates with other Azure services, such as Azure Data Lake Storage and Azure SQL Data Warehouse, facilitating a streamlined data pipeline.
  • Collaboration
    Offers collaborative features like notebooks that allow multiple users to work together easily on data analytics projects.
  • Performance Optimization
    Built on top of Apache Spark, Azure Databricks provides high performance and optimized execution for data engineering and machine learning tasks.
  • Managed Service
    As a fully managed service, it handles infrastructure provisioning and maintenance, enabling users to focus on data insights rather than backend management.

Possible disadvantages of Azure Databricks

  • Cost
    Azure Databricks can be expensive, particularly for large-scale and long-running workloads, which may be a concern for budget-conscious organizations.
  • Complexity
    Despite its capabilities, Azure Databricks may have a steep learning curve, especially for users not familiar with Apache Spark.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Leveraging Azure-specific services can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate workloads and data to other cloud platforms.
  • Limited Offline Capabilities
    As a cloud-native service, it requires an active internet connection and might not suit scenarios that require offline processing.
  • Compliance Concerns
    Due to Azure Databricks' integration with Azure, users need to carefully manage compliance and data governance, which might be complex in multi-regional deployments.

Analysis of R Lang

Overall verdict

  • Yes, R is a good choice, especially for those who need to perform complex statistical analyses and create high-quality visualizations. Its extensive ecosystem of packages and support for a variety of data formats make it a versatile tool in data science.

Why this product is good

  • R is highly regarded for its capabilities in statistical analysis and data visualization. It is an open-source programming language that offers a vast array of packages and libraries designed for data analysis, making it a powerful tool for statisticians and data scientists. Its community is active and continuously contributes to its development, ensuring that it stays updated with the latest methods in data analysis.

Recommended for

  • Statisticians who need robust tools for performing detailed data analysis.
  • Data scientists looking for comprehensive libraries for data manipulation and visualization.
  • Researchers who need to perform statistical tests and model implementation.
  • Academics and educators who teach statistics and data analysis.

R Lang videos

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Azure Databricks videos

Azure Databricks is Easier Than You Think

More videos:

  • Review - Ingest, prepare & transform using Azure Databricks & Data Factory | Azure Friday
  • Review - Azure Databricks - What's new! | DB102

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to R Lang and Azure Databricks)
Technical Computing
57 57%
43% 43
Numerical Computation
100 100%
0% 0
Office & Productivity
0 0%
100% 100
Business & Commerce
45 45%
55% 55

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare R Lang and Azure Databricks

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Azure Databricks Reviews

10 Best Big Data Analytics Tools For Reporting In 2022
Azure Databricks is a data analytics tool optimized for Microsoft’s Azure cloud services solution. It provides three development environments for data-intensive apps, namely Databricks SQL, Databricks Machine Learning, and Databricks Data Science & Engineering.The platform supports languages including Python, Java, R, Scala, and SQL, plus data science frameworks and...
Source: theqalead.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, R Lang should be more popular than Azure Databricks. It has been mentiond 5 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

R Lang mentions (5)

  • How to generate a great website and reference manual for your R package
    Generating a website for your R package is always a great idea. If the package is based on some paper, it will help it get noticed and eventually used. And once you have a website, it's just as well to include a reference manual for the package in it, that complements or is a bit more updated than the one published in CRAN. Or simply in another format. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • R
    This package is definitely related to R language) (see package URL, it points to r-project.org subdomain). Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Rr
    Common misconception. Actually it's a Fibonacci sequence, so the next one is https://rrrrr-project.org. This does also mean that there's https://-project.org, and that https://r-project.org secretly disambiguates into two different projects. - Source: Hacker News / about 3 years ago
  • Rr
    We already have https://r-project.org. Now we have https://rr-project.org. So, https://rrr-project.org is next? - Source: Hacker News / about 3 years ago
  • r-project.org is down?
    Thank you, but unfortunately, the archive I'm talking about is the archive of old package versions, which seems to only be available through r-project.org. Source: about 3 years ago

Azure Databricks mentions (2)

  • Top 30 Microsoft Azure Services
    In the big data space, Azure offers Azure Databricks. This is an Apache Spark big data analytics and machine learning service over a Distributed File System. The distributed cluster of nodes running analytics and AI operations in parallel allow for fast processing of large volumes of data and integration with popular machine learning libraries such as PyTorch unleash endless possibilities for custom ML. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago
  • ZooKeeper-free Kafka is out. First Demo
    https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/databricks. - Source: Hacker News / about 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing R Lang and Azure Databricks, you can also consider the following products

C++ - Has imperative, object-oriented and generic programming features, while also providing the facilities for low level memory manipulation

IBM Cloud Pak for Data - Move to cloud faster with IBM Cloud Paks running on Red Hat OpenShift – fully integrated, open, containerized and secure solutions certified by IBM.

Go Programming Language - Go, also called golang, is a programming language initially developed at Google in 2007 by Robert...

MicroStrategy - MicroStrategy is a cloud-based platform providing business intelligence, mobile intelligence and network applications.

D (Programming Language) - D is a language with C-like syntax and static typing.

MyAnalytics - MyAnalytics, now rebranded to Microsoft Viva Insights, is a customizable suite of tools that integrates with Office 365 to drive employee engagement and increase productivity.