You’re absolutely right. Integration with the whole ecosystem can provide real-time streaming SQL queries against not only open source databases MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB, but also (1) enterprise relational databases Oracle, Teradata, Microsoft SQL Server, and IBM DB2; (3) message buses including Kafka, AWS Kinesis, ActiveMQ/AMQP, IBM WebSphere MQ, and Teradata Listener; (3) natural streaming data including HTTP, web sockets, network sockets, and files; and (4) cloud data warehouses including Amazon Redshift and Snowflake.
Imagine, for example, writing a query that would join a Kafka stream against a Kinesis stream and enrich it with a database lookup. You'll find all of that today with SQLstream Blaze.
If you look at its syntax reference page (https://github.com/confluentinc/ksql/blob/0.1.x/docs/syntax-...), you can see that it only has a small number of scalar functions, a handful of aggregate functions, and only four major SELECT operators including an invented and nonstandard WINDOW clause (even though ANSI standard SQL has had a WINDOW clause for 18 years, since SQL:99).
Contrast that with SQLstream Blaze, which is a full-fledged streaming SQL engine with over a hundred scalar functions, operators, CEP operators/temporal predicates, aggregate functions, analytic functions, UDXes/UDFs, and major statement operators. (See http://sqlstream.com/docs/index.html?conc_transforming_and_a... for details.)
This all comes into play when an experienced SQL developer wants to write a real-world query or port an existing business application from an RBDMS to a stream processor. Outside of toy applications, this just can't be done with without a full-fledged streaming SQL engine.
If you want streaming ANSI standard SQL support for both ingest and egress to and from a vast number of systems including (1) open source databases MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB; (2) enterprise relational databases Oracle, Teradata, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, Actian Vectorwise, Ingres, and ParAccel; (3) message buses including Kafka, AWS Kinesis, ActiveMQ/AMQP, IBM WebSphere MQ, and Teradata Listener; (4) natural streaming data including HTTP, web sockets, network sockets, and files; and (5) cloud data warehouses including Amazon Redshift and Snowflake, you can download and use SQLstream Blaze (http://www.sqlstream.com/download) today. You can even JOIN streams from AWS Kinesis against streams in Kafka to combine cloud and on-premise data via a single query.
Confluent doesn't understand the ANSI SQL standard. Support for aggregating over windows with standard syntax goes back to SQL:99, so it's been around for 18 years. Any company playing in the SQL space should make a point of understanding the standard.
SQLstream could not agree with you more that an up-front explanation of SQL compatibility level is necessary to evaluate a product. SQLstream Blaze is SQL:2011 compliant.
Imagine, for example, writing a query that would join a Kafka stream against a Kinesis stream and enrich it with a database lookup. You'll find all of that today with SQLstream Blaze.