DBMS > Amazon Redshift vs. ClickHouse vs. Kdb vs. Lovefield vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Amazon Redshift vs. ClickHouse vs. Kdb vs. Lovefield vs. Sphinx

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Large scale data warehouse service for use with business intelligence tools

A high-performance, column-oriented SQL DBMS for online analytical processing (OLAP) that uses all available system resources to their full potential to process each analytical query as fast as possible. It is available as both an open-source software and a cloud offering.

High performance Time Series DBMS

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	17.94
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	16.34
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	7.55
Rank	#53	Overall
	#3	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

aws.amazon.com/redshift

clickhouse.com

kx.com

google.github.io/lovefield

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift

clickhouse.com/docs

code.kx.com

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Amazon (based on PostgreSQL)

Clickhouse Inc.

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Google

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2012

2016

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2014

2001

Current release

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

3.6, May 2018

2.1.12, February 2017

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

free 32-bit version

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

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.

DoubleCloud: Fully managed ClickHouse alongside best-in-class managed open-source services to build analytics at scale.
ClickHouse Cloud: Get the performance you love from open source ClickHouse in a serverless offering that takes care of the details so you can spend more time getting insight out of the fastest database on earth.
Aiven for Clickhouse: Managed cloud data warehousing with high-speed analytics.

Implementation language

C++

JavaScript

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

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

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

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

restricted

yes

table attribute 'grouped'

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

does not fully support an SQL-standard

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

SQL-like query language (q)

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

gRPC
HTTP REST
JDBC
MySQL wire protocol
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Proprietary protocol

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

3rd party library
C++
Elixir

3rd party library
Go

3rd party library
Java

3rd party library
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party library
Kotlin

3rd party library
Nim

3rd party library
Perl

3rd party library
PHP

3rd party library
Python

3rd party library
R

3rd party library
Ruby

3rd party library
Rust
Scala

3rd party library

C
C#
C++
Go
J
Java
JavaScript
Lua
MatLab
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Scala

JavaScript

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

in Python

yes

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

with views

Using read-only observers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

key based and custom

horizontal partitioning

none

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Asynchronous and synchronous physical replication; geographically distributed replicas; support for object storages.

Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

similar paradigm used for internal processing

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

informational only, not enforced by the system

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

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles. Column and row based policies. Quotas and resource limits. Pluggable authentication with LDAP and Kerberos. Password based, X.509 certificate, and SSH key authentication.

rights management via user accounts

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
» more

Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
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Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
» more

Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
» more

Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
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Licensing and pricing models

upon request
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.