DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. LokiJS vs. PostgreSQL vs. ToroDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. LokiJS vs. PostgreSQL vs. ToroDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

ToroDB seems to be discontinued. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines Ranking.

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

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.

In-memory JavaScript DBMS

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

A MongoDB-compatible JSON document store, built on top of PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

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

Score	12.45
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	2.84
Rank	#100	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Score	0.49
Rank	#260	Overall
	#42	Document stores

Score	636.25
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

cloud.google.com/spanner

github.com/techfort/LokiJS

www.postgresql.org

github.com/torodb/server

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

techfort.github.io/LokiJS

www.postgresql.org/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Google

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

8Kdata

Initial release

2013

2017

2014

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2016

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

16.3, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

Open Source

BSD

Open Source

AGPL-V3

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

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Implementation language

C++

JavaScript

Java

Server operating systems

Linux

hosted

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

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

All OS with a Java 7 VM

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, integer, double, boolean, date, object_id

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

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

standard with numerous extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

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

JavaScript API

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

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

JavaScript

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

View functions in JavaScript

user defined functions

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

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

none

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

none

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

atomic operations within a single collection possible

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Serialization of a DB in a Node.JS/Cordova/PhoneGap environment. Usage of the IndexedDB-API in a browser.

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

More information provided by the system vendor

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