DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NCache vs. PlanetScale vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NCache vs. PlanetScale vs. Snowflake

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

Scalable, distributed, serverless MySQL database platform built on top of Vitess

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

Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

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

Score	0.96
Rank	#195	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Score	1.49
Rank	#155	Overall
	#72	Relational DBMS

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

planetscale.com

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

planetscale.com/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Microsoft

Alachisoft

PlanetScale

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2013

2014

2005

2020

2014

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

5.3.3, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

C#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

Server operating systems

Linux

hosted

Linux
Windows

Docker
Linux
macOS

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

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

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

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

SQL-like query language

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

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

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
JDBC
MySQL protocol
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

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

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

JavaScript

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

yes

proprietary syntax

user defined functions

Triggers

JavaScript

yes

Notifications

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Sharding

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, with selectable consistency level

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

Eventual Consistency across shards
Immediate Consistency within a shard

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

ACID at shard level

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

NCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

NCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
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Key customers

Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
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Market metrics

Market Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
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Licensing and pricing models

NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
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