DBMS > Apache Drill vs. ClickHouse vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. PostgreSQL

System Properties Comparison Apache Drill vs. ClickHouse vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. PostgreSQL

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.

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

Elastic, large scale data warehouse service leveraging the broad eco-system of SQL Server

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

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

Score	1.95
Rank	#127	Overall
	#23	Document stores
	#60	Relational DBMS

Score	16.34
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	2.68
Rank	#106	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	20.56
Rank	#31	Overall
	#19	Relational DBMS

Score	645.54
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Website

drill.apache.org

clickhouse.com

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

azure.microsoft.com/services/synapse-analytics

www.postgresql.org

Technical documentation

drill.apache.org/docs

clickhouse.com/docs

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

docs.microsoft.com/azure/synapse-analytics

www.postgresql.org/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Clickhouse Inc.

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

Microsoft

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Initial release

2012

2016

2010

2016

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

Current release

1.20.3, January 2023

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

16.3, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

BSD

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.

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Implementation language

C++

Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

hosted

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL SELECT statement is SQL:2003 compliant

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

yes

standard with numerous extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

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

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

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

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#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

C#
Java
PHP

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

yes

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

Transact SQL

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

key based and custom

Sharding

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

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

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/synapse-analytics/sql-data-warehouse/sql-data-warehouse-table-constraints

yes

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a document possible

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Optimistic locking

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

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.

Access rights for users can be defined per database

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

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More resources

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Conferences, events and webinars

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Monitoring PostgreSQL with Redgate Monitor
Webinar, 10-11am CT / 4-5pm BST, 22 May 2024

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