DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Cassandra vs. Drizzle vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft SQL Server

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Cassandra vs. Drizzle vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft SQL Server

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Drizzle has published its last release in September 2012. The open-source project is discontinued and Drizzle is excluded from the DB-Engines ranking.

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

MySQL fork with a pluggable micro-kernel and with an emphasis of performance over compatibility.

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

cassandra.apache.org

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Drizzle project, originally started by Brian Aker

Google

Microsoft

Initial release

2013

2008

2017

1989

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

4.1.3, July 2023

7.2.4, September 2012

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GNU GPL

commercial

restricted free version is 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.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

C++

Java

C++

Server operating systems

Linux

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X

hosted

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

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

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

JDBC

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C++
Java
PHP

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Triggers

yes

hooks for callbacks inside the server can be used.

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

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.

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Pluggable authentication mechanisms

e.g. LDAP, HTTP

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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