DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Citus vs. ClickHouse vs. Lovefield

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Citus vs. ClickHouse vs. Lovefield

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Scalable hybrid operational and analytics RDBMS for big data use cases based on PostgreSQL

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.

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	2.21
Rank	#118	Overall
	#56	Relational DBMS

Score	16.34
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

www.citusdata.com

clickhouse.com

google.github.io/lovefield

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

docs.citusdata.com

clickhouse.com/docs

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Clickhouse Inc.

Google

Initial release

2013

2010

2016

2014

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

8.1, December 2018

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

2.1.12, February 2017

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

Aiven for Clickhouse: Managed cloud data warehousing with high-speed analytics.
DoubleCloud: Fully managed ClickHouse alongside best-in-class managed open-source services to build analytics at scale.
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++

JavaScript

Server operating systems

Linux

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Data scheme

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-like DML and DDL statements

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

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

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

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

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

JavaScript

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

user defined functions

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

yes

Triggers

yes

Using read-only observers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

key based and custom

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

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

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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.

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