DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Citus vs. CouchDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TiDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Citus vs. CouchDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TiDB

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 native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

TiDB is an open source distributed SQL database that supports Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP) workloads. It is MySQL compatible and features horizontal scalability, strong consistency, and high availability.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store

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	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	4.66
Rank	#70	Overall
	#38	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

www.citusdata.com

couchdb.apache.org

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

pingcap.com

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

docs.citusdata.com

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

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

docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer

Microsoft

PingCAP, Inc.

Initial release

2013

2010

2005

1989

2016

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

8.1, December 2018

3.3.3, December 2023

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

8.0.0, March 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

restricted free version is available

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.

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TiDB Cloud: Fully-managed TiDB Service. Bring everything great about TiDB to the cloud.

Implementation language

C++

Erlang

C++

Go, Rust

Server operating systems

Linux

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux

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

specific XML type available, but no XML query functionality

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

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

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

GORM
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
SQLAlchemy

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

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

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

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

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

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.

View functions in JavaScript

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

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

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

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Using Raft consensus algorithm to ensure data replication with strong consistency among multiple replicas.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

with TiSpark Connector

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

full support since version 6.6

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users can be defined per database

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

TiDB is an advanced open-source, distributed SQL database for modern application...
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Competitive advantages

- HORIZONTAL SCALING : TiDB grants total transparency into your data workloads without...
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Typical application scenarios

TiDB is ideal for transactional applications that require extreme scalability and...
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Key customers

Block, Pinterest, Catalyst, Bolt, Flipkart, Capcom, Shopee (E-commerce), JD Cloud...
» more

Market metrics

34K+ GitHub stars 5K+ members in TiDB Community Slack 1K+ community contributors...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

TiDB Community : Free open source software (Apache 2.0) TiDB Self-Hosted : Enterprise...
» more

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