DBMS > Apache Impala vs. IRONdb vs. Spark SQL vs. SQLite vs. Vertica

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. IRONdb vs. Spark SQL vs. SQLite vs. Vertica

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

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

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

A distributed Time Series DBMS with a focus on scalability, fault tolerance and operational simplicity

Spark SQL is a component on top of 'Spark Core' for structured data processing

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Cloud or off-cloud analytical database and query engine for structured and semi-structured streaming and batch data. Machine learning platform with built-in algorithms, data preparation capabilities, and model evaluation and management via SQL or Python.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

Column oriented

Secondary database models

Document store

Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

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

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	18.96
Rank	#33	Overall
	#20	Relational DBMS

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Score	10.68
Rank	#43	Overall
	#27	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

www.circonus.com/solutions/time-series-database/

spark.apache.org/sql

www.sqlite.org

www.vertica.com

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

docs.circonus.com/irondb/category/getting-started

spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

vertica.com/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Circonus LLC.

Apache Software Foundation

Dwayne Richard Hipp

OpenText

previously Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard

Initial release

2013

2017

2014

2000

2005

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

V0.10.20, January 2018

3.5.0 ( 2.13), September 2023

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

12.0.3, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Public Domain

commercial

Limited community edition free

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

on-premises, all major clouds - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and containers

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

Implementation language

C++

C and C++

Scala

C++

Server operating systems

Linux

Linux
OS X
Windows

server-less

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

dynamic column types

Yes, but also semi-structure/unstructured data storage, and complex hierarchical data (like Parquet) stored and/or queried.

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

text, numeric, histograms

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

No Indexes Required. Different internal optimization strategy, but same functionality included.

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

SQL-like query language (Circonus Analytics Query Language: CAQL)

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

Full 1999 standard plus machine learning, time series and geospatial. Over 650 functions.

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

ADO.NET
JDBC
Kafka Connector
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spark Connector
vSQL

character-based, interactive, front-end utility

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

.Net
C
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala

Java
Python
R
Scala

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

yes, in Lua

yes, PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, with minor differences

Triggers

yes

yes, called Custom Alerts

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Automatic, metric affinity per node

yes, utilizing Spark Core

none

horizontal partitioning, hierarchical partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

configurable replication factor, datacenter aware

none

Multi-source replication

One, or more copies of data replicated across nodes, or object-store used for repository.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

Bi-directional Spark integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate consistency per node, eventual consistency across nodes

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard; supports Kerberos, LDAP, Ident and hash

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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Licensing and pricing models

Cost-based models and subscription-based models are both available. One license is...
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