DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Apache Pinot vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Snowflake vs. StarRocks

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Apache Pinot vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Snowflake vs. StarRocks

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Realtime distributed OLAP datastore, designed to answer OLAP queries with low latency

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

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

An open source, high-performance columnar analytical database that enables real-time, multi-dimensional, and highly concurrent data analytics

Forked from Apache Doris

Primary database model

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	10.63
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	0.35
Rank	#274	Overall
	#128	Relational DBMS

Score	24.97
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	133.72
Rank	#7	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	0.95
Rank	#193	Overall
	#89	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

pinot.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.snowflake.com

www.starrocks.io

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

docs.pinot.apache.org

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

docs.starrocks.io/en-us/latest/introduction/StarRocks_intro

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Apache Software Foundation and contributors

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

The Linux Foundation

since Feb 2023

Initial release

2013

2015

2014

2020

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

1.0.0, September 2023

3.3, June 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

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++

Java

C++, Java

Server operating systems

Linux

All OS with a Java JDK11 or higher

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

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

yes

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

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

SQL-like query language

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

JDBC

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

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
MySQL protocol

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Go
Java
Python

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

horizontal partitioning (by range and hash)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

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

Eventual 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

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

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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

Role based access control and fine grained access rights

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