DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Apache Impala vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. Snowflake vs. XTDB

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Apache Impala vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. Snowflake vs. XTDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

A Wide Column Store for rapid development using massive semi-structured datasets

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

A general purpose database with bitemporal SQL and Datalog and graph queries

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	0.51
Rank	#256	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#118	Relational DBMS

Score	12.45
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	4.04
Rank	#77	Overall
	#6	Wide column stores

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	0.18
Rank	#332	Overall
	#46	Document stores

Website

alasql.org

impala.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/tables

www.snowflake.com

github.com/xtdb/xtdb
www.xtdb.com

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

www.xtdb.com/docs

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Juxt Ltd.

Initial release

2014

2013

2012

2014

2019

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

1.19, September 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

Open Source

MIT License

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

JavaScript

C++

Clojure

Server operating systems

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

Linux

hosted

All OS with a Java 8 (and higher) VM
Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, extensible-data-notation format

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to SQL99, but no user access control, stored procedures and host language bindings.

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

limited SQL, making use of Apache Calcite

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

HTTP REST
JDBC

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

.Net
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Clojure
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

selectable replication factor

yes

implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

yes

yes, each node contains all data

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

yes

only for local storage and DOM-storage

optimistic locking

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

yes, flexibel persistency by using storage technologies like Apache Kafka, RocksDB or LMDB

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

Access rights based on private key authentication or shared access signatures

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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