DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TerarkDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TerarkDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

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.

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A key-value store forked from RocksDB with advanced compression algorithms. It can be used standalone or as a storage engine for MySQL and MongoDB

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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	0.33
Rank	#286	Overall
	#131	Relational DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.08
Rank	#367	Overall
	#56	Key-value stores

Website

impala.apache.org

cloud.google.com/spanner

google.github.io/lovefield

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

github.com/bytedance/terarkdb

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

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

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

bytedance.larkoffice.com/docs/doccnZmYFqHBm06BbvYgjsHHcKc

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Google

Microsoft

ByteDance, originally Terark

Initial release

2013

2017

2014

1989

2016

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

2.1.12, February 2017

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

restricted open source version available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

C++

JavaScript

C++

Server operating systems

Linux

hosted

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

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

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

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

yes

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

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

C++ API
Java API

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

JavaScript

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

C++
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

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

Triggers

Using read-only observers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

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

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

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

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

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

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

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