DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. TimesTen

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.

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

An in-memory SQL relational database that delivers microsecond response and high throughput for OLTP applications. TimesTen can be deployed as a standalone database or as a cache to a backend Oracle database.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	10.63
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	2.69
Rank	#101	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Score	83.44
Rank	#15	Overall
	#10	Relational DBMS

Score	72.95
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	1.26
Rank	#164	Overall
	#75	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

cloud.google.com/spanner

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

docs.oracle.com/en/database/other-databases/timesten/index.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Google

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Microsoft

Oracle

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

2013

2017

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2010

1998

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

11.5.2, August 2024

V12

Release 22.1

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

STACKIT MariaDB offers MariaDB in a fully managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

C++

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

Linux

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

hosted

IBM AIX Power PC 64-bit
Linux arm64
Linux x86-64
Solaris SPARC 64
Solaris SPARC/x86
Solaris x86-64

Data scheme

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

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

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

with proprietary extensions

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
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)
Pro*C/C++ programming interfaces
SQL and PL/SQL via JDBC

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C++
Java
Node.js
PL/SQL
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

Transact SQL

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, with always 3 replicas available

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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