DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. MySQL vs. ScyllaDB vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. MySQL vs. ScyllaDB vs. Sphinx

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Widely used open source RDBMS

Cassandra and DynamoDB compatible wide column store

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Wide column store

Search engine

Secondary database models

Document store

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Key-value store

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

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	4.75
Rank	#68	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

impala.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.mysql.com

www.scylladb.com

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

firebase.google.com/docs/database

dev.mysql.com/doc

docs.scylladb.com

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

ScyllaDB

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2013

2012

1995

2015

2001

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

8.4.0, April 2024

ScyllaDB Open Source 5.4.1, January 2024

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

Linux

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

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

cluster global secondary indices

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Proprietary protocol (CQL)

compatible with CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
RESTful HTTP API (DynamoDB compatible)
Thrift

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

For CQL interface: C#, C++, Clojure, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala
For DynamoDB interface: .Net, ColdFusion, Erlang, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

proprietary syntax

yes, Lua

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

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

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

in-memory tables

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

Access rights for users can be defined per object

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

ScyllaDB is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale. It’s adopted...
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Competitive advantages

Highly-performant (efficiently utilizes full resources of a node and network; millions...
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Typical application scenarios

ScyllaDB is ideal for applications that require high throughput and low latency at...
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Key customers

Discord, Epic Games, Expedia, Zillow, Comcast, Disney+ Hotstar, Samsung, ShareChat,...
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Market metrics

ScyllaDB typically offers ~75% total cost of ownership savings, with ~5X higher throughput...
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Licensing and pricing models

ScyllaDB Open Source - free open source software (AGPL) ScyllaDB Enterprise - subscription-based...
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