DBMS > Apache Drill vs. Apache Impala vs. Databend vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Apache Drill vs. Apache Impala vs. Databend vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Snowflake

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Schema-free SQL Query Engine for Hadoop, NoSQL and Cloud Storage

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

An open-source, elastic, and workload-aware cloud data warehouse designed to meet businesses' massive-scale analytics needs at low cost and with low complexity

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

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

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.02
Rank	#124	Overall
	#22	Document stores
	#59	Relational DBMS

Score	12.45
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	0.34
Rank	#283	Overall
	#130	Relational DBMS

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

drill.apache.org

impala.apache.org

github.com/datafuselabs/databend
www.databend.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

drill.apache.org/docs

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

docs.databend.com

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Databend Labs

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2012

2013

2021

2014

Current release

1.20.3, January 2023

4.1.0, June 2022

1.0.59, April 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

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++

Rust

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

hosted
Linux
macOS

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

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

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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 properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL SELECT statement is SQL:2003 compliant

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

SQL-like query language

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
RESTful HTTP API

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C++

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

JavaScript

user defined functions

Triggers

JavaScript

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

none

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

Depending on the underlying data source

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

Depending on the underlying data source

User concepts

Access control

Depending on the underlying data source

Access rights for users, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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

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