DBMS > Amazon CloudSearch vs. Apache Impala vs. EXASOL vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Amazon CloudSearch vs. Apache Impala vs. EXASOL vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Snowflake

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A hosted search engine service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

High-performance, in-memory, MPP database specifically designed for in-memory analytics.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

Primary database model

Search engine

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.87
Rank	#140	Overall
	#12	Search engines

Score	14.03
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	2.25
Rank	#120	Overall
	#57	Relational DBMS

Score	829.80
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	123.20
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch

impala.apache.org

www.exasol.com

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

www.exasol.com/resources

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Exasol

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2012

2013

2000

1989

2014

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

restricted free version is available

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

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

Linux
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

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

all search fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

.Net
JDBC
ODBC
WebSocket

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Java
Lua
Python
R

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

user defined functions

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

yes

automatic partitioning across Amazon Search Instance as required

Sharding

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

managed transparently by AWS

selectable replication factor

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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

authentication via encrypted signatures

Access rights for users, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

Access rights for users, groups and roles according to SQL-standard

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

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