DBMS > Apache Impala vs. ScyllaDB vs. Snowflake vs. Trafodion vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. ScyllaDB vs. Snowflake vs. Trafodion vs. VoltDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Apache Trafodion has been retired in 2021. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines Ranking.

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Cassandra and DynamoDB compatible wide column store

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

Transactional SQL-on-Hadoop DBMS

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Key-value store

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

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	4.75
Rank	#68	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	1.44
Rank	#158	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

docs.scylladb.com

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

trafodion.apache.org/documentation.html

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

ScyllaDB

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Apache Software Foundation, originally developed by HP

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2013

2015

2014

2010

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

ScyllaDB Open Source 5.4.1, January 2024

2.3.0, February 2019

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license available

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

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.

Scylla Cloud: Create real-time applications that run at global scale with Scylla Cloud, the industry’s most powerful NoSQL DBaaS

Implementation language

C++

C++, Java

Java, C++

Server operating systems

Linux

hosted

Linux

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

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

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

cluster global secondary indices

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary protocol (CQL)

compatible with CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
RESTful HTTP API (DynamoDB compatible)
Thrift

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

For CQL interface: C#, C++, Clojure, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala
For DynamoDB interface: .Net, ColdFusion, Erlang, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC/ADO.Net

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

yes, Lua

user defined functions

Java Stored Procedures

Java

Triggers

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

yes

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

yes, via HBase

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

via user defined functions and HBase

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Snapshots and command logging

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

in-memory tables

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

Access rights for users can be defined per object

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

ScyllaDB is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale. It’s adopted...
» more

Competitive advantages

Highly-performant (efficiently utilizes full resources of a node and network; millions...
» more

Typical application scenarios

ScyllaDB is ideal for applications that require high throughput and low latency at...
» more

Key customers

Discord, Epic Games, Expedia, Zillow, Comcast, Disney+ Hotstar, Samsung, ShareChat,...
» more

Market metrics

ScyllaDB typically offers ~75% total cost of ownership savings, with ~5X higher throughput...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

ScyllaDB Open Source - free open source software (AGPL) ScyllaDB Enterprise - subscription-based...
» 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.