DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. Snowflake vs. XTDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. Snowflake vs. XTDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

High performance Time Series DBMS

A Wide Column Store for rapid development using massive semi-structured datasets

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

A general purpose database with bitemporal SQL and Datalog and graph queries

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Score	12.45
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	7.71
Rank	#49	Overall
	#2	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	4.04
Rank	#77	Overall
	#6	Wide column stores

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	0.18
Rank	#332	Overall
	#46	Document stores

Website

impala.apache.org

kx.com

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/tables

www.snowflake.com

github.com/xtdb/xtdb
www.xtdb.com

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

code.kx.com

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

www.xtdb.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Juxt Ltd.

Initial release

2013

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2012

2014

2019

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

3.6, May 2018

1.19, September 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

free 32-bit version

commercial

Open Source

MIT License

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++

Clojure

Server operating systems

Linux

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

All OS with a Java 8 (and higher) VM
Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

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

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, extensible-data-notation format

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

table attribute 'grouped'

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

SQL-like query language (q)

yes

limited SQL, making use of Apache Calcite

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

RESTful HTTP API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

HTTP REST
JDBC

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

C
C#
C++
Go
J
Java
JavaScript
Lua
MatLab
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Scala

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Clojure
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

with views

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Source-replica replication

yes

implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

yes

yes, each node contains all data

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

similar paradigm used for internal processing

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

optimistic locking

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, flexibel persistency by using storage technologies like Apache Kafka, RocksDB or LMDB

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

rights management via user accounts

Access rights based on private key authentication or shared access signatures

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
» more

Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
» more

Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
» more

Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
» more

Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

upon request
» more

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.