DBMS > Apache Drill vs. ClickHouse vs. Firebird vs. TimescaleDB vs. Vitess

System Properties Comparison Apache Drill vs. ClickHouse vs. Firebird vs. TimescaleDB vs. Vitess

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

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.

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Scalable, distributed, cloud-native DBMS, extending MySQL

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

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	15.55
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	4.46
Rank	#71	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Score	0.88
Rank	#203	Overall
	#95	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

drill.apache.org/docs

clickhouse.com/docs

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

docs.timescale.com

vitess.io/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Clickhouse Inc.

Firebird Foundation

Timescale

The Linux Foundation, PlanetScale

Initial release

2012

2016

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2017

2013

Current release

1.20.3, January 2023

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

5.0.0, January 2024

2.15.0, May 2024

15.0.2, December 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0, commercial licenses available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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.
Aiven for Clickhouse: Managed cloud data warehousing with high-speed analytics.
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.

Implementation language

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Docker
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data 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

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL SELECT statement is SQL:2003 compliant

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

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

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

ADO.NET
JDBC
MySQL protocol
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C++

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++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

yes

PSQL

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

key based and custom

none

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

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

Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency across shards
Immediate Consistency within a shard

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID at shard level

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

Depending on the underlying data source

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.

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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.