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DocumentDB stands out with some very unique capabilities. Azure DocumentDB offers the following key capabilities and benefits.

Schema Free

In a relational database, every table has a schema that defines the columns and data types that each row in the table must conform to.

In contrast, a document database has no defined schema, and every document can be structured differently.

SQL Syntax

DocumentDB enables complex ad-hoc queries using SQL language, and every document is instantly queryable the moment it’s created. You can search on any property anywhere within the document hierarchy.

Tunable Consistency

It provides some granular, well-defined consistency levels, which allows you to make sound trade-offs between consistency, availability, and latency.

You can select from four well-defined consistency levels to achieve optimal trade-off between consistency and performance. For queries and read operations, DocumentDB offers four distinct consistency levels −

• Strong
• Bounded-staleness
• Session
• Eventual

Elastic Scale

Scalability is the name of the game with NoSQL, and DocumentDB delivers. DocumentDB has already been proven its scale.

• Major services like Office OneNote and Xbox are already backed by DocumentDB with databases containing tens of terabytes of JSON documents, over a million active users, and operating consistently with 99.95% availability.
• You can elastically scale DocumentDB with predictable performance by creating more units as your application grows.

Fully Managed

DocumentDB is available as a fully managed cloud-based platform as a service running on Azure.

• There is simply nothing for you to install or manage.
• There are no servers, cables, no operating systems or updates to deal with, no replicas to set up.
• Microsoft does all that work and keeps the service running.
• Within literally minutes, you can get started working with DocumentDB using just a browser and an Azure subscription.