DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Apache Impala vs. H2 vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Apache Impala vs. H2 vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Snowflake

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

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

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	0.46
Rank	#260	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#121	Relational DBMS

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	8.13
Rank	#49	Overall
	#31	Relational DBMS

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

impala.apache.org

www.h2database.com

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

www.h2database.com/html/main.html

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Thomas Mueller

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2014

2013

2005

2010

2014

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

2.2.220, July 2023

V12

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

dual-licence (Mozilla public license, Eclipse public license)

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

JavaScript

C++

Java

C++

Server operating systems

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

Linux

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

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

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Java

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions

Transact SQL

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

selectable replication factor

With clustering: 2 database servers on different computers operate on identical copies of a database

yes, with always 3 replicas available

yes

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.