DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Quasardb vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Quasardb vs. Snowflake

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.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Distributed, high-performance timeseries database

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

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	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	0.21
Rank	#322	Overall
	#29	Time Series DBMS

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

cloud.google.com/spanner

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

quasar.ai

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

doc.quasar.ai/master

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Google

Microsoft

quasardb

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2013

2017

2014

2009

2014

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

3.14.1, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

Free community edition, Non-profit organizations and non-commercial usage are eligible for free licenses

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.

Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

Linux

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

yes

integer and binary

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

with tags

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like query language

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

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

HTTP API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

.Net
C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

JavaScript

user defined functions

Triggers

JavaScript

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

consistent hashing

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Source-replica replication with selectable replication factor

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

with Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session 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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using LevelDB

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Transient mode

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)

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Cryptographically strong user authentication and audit trail

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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