DBMS > Apache Impala vs. ClickHouse vs. CockroachDB vs. CouchDB vs. GBase

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. ClickHouse vs. CockroachDB vs. CouchDB vs. GBase

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

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.

CockroachDB is a distributed database architected for modern cloud applications. It is wire compatible with PostgreSQL and backed by a Key-Value Store, which is either RocksDB or a purpose-built derivative, called Pebble.

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

Widely used RDBMS in China, including analytical, transactional, distributed transactional, and cloud-native data warehousing.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Time Series DBMS

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

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

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	16.34
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	6.15
Rank	#55	Overall
	#33	Relational DBMS

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	1.07
Rank	#185	Overall
	#86	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

clickhouse.com

www.cockroachlabs.com

couchdb.apache.org

www.gbase.cn

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

clickhouse.com/docs

www.cockroachlabs.com/docs

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Clickhouse Inc.

Cockroach Labs

Apache Software Foundation

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

General Data Technology Co., Ltd.

Initial release

2013

2016

2015

2005

2004

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

23.1.1, May 2023

3.3.3, December 2023

GBase 8a, GBase 8s, GBase 8c

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0, commercial license available

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

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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Implementation language

C++

Erlang

C, Java, Python

Server operating systems

Linux

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

Linux
macOS
Windows

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

dynamic schema

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

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

yes, wire compatible with PostgreSQL

Standard with numerous extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

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

JDBC

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
C API
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

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#
C++
Clojure
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

yes

View functions in JavaScript

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

key based and custom

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

all tables are translated to an ordered KV store and then broken down into 64MB ranges, which are then used as replicas in RAFT

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

horizontal partitioning (by range, list and hash) and vertical partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

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

Multi-source replication using RAFT

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

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

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.

Role-based access control

Access rights for users can be defined per database

yes

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