DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Snowflake vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Snowflake vs. VoltDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

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

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

Secondary database models

Document store

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

Score	11.58
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	161.78
Rank	#6	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	1.23
Rank	#161	Overall
	#72	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

www.snowflake.com

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Snowflake Computing Inc.

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2013

2014

2010

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

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

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Implementation language

C++

Java, C++

Server operating systems

Linux

hosted

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

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

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

user defined functions

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

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

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

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.

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

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

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

Snowflake is the Database Management System of the Year 2024
16 January 2025, Tom Russell

Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2022, defending the title from last year
3 January 2023, Matthias Gelbmann, Paul Andlinger

Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2021
3 January 2022, Paul Andlinger, Matthias Gelbmann

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Recent citations in the news

Apache Impala becomes Top-Level Project
28 November 2017, SDTimes.com

Cloudera brings Apache Iceberg data lake format to its Data Platform
30 June 2022, SiliconANGLE News

Hudi: Uber Engineering’s Incremental Processing Framework on Apache Hadoop
12 March 2017, Uber

How different SQL-on-Hadoop engines satisfy BI workloads
24 February 2016, CIO

Apache Doris just 'graduated': Why care about this SQL data warehouse
24 June 2022, InfoWorld

provided by Google News

VoltDB Launches Active(N) Lossless Cross Data Center Replication
31 August 2021, PR Newswire

VoltDB Announces Key New Hires
26 October 2021, citybiz

MemSQL, VoltDB Vie For In-Memory Big Data Role
12 February 2015, InformationWeek

VoltDB Reveals Key Features to Optimize 5G, Cloud, and Edge
28 June 2021, PR Newswire

New startup from Postgres creator puts the database at heart of software stack
12 March 2024, TechCrunch

provided by Google News

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