DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Apache Kylin vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Apache Kylin vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. Snowflake

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

A distributed analytics engine for big data, providing a SQL interface and multi-dimensional analysis (OLAP) and leveraging the Hadoop stack

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

Elastic, large scale data warehouse service leveraging the broad eco-system of SQL Server

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	1.18
Rank	#172	Overall
	#79	Relational DBMS

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	20.56
Rank	#31	Overall
	#19	Relational DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

kylin.apache.org

www.ibm.com/products/informix

azure.microsoft.com/services/synapse-analytics

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

kylin.apache.org/docs

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

docs.microsoft.com/azure/synapse-analytics

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Apache Software Foundation, originally contributed from eBay Inc

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2013

2015

1984

2016

2014

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

3.1.0, July 2020

14.10.FC5, November 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

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++

Java

C, C++ and Java

C++

Server operating systems

Linux

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

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

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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

ANSI SQL for queries (using Apache Calcite)

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

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

C#
Java
PHP

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

yes

Transact SQL

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/synapse-analytics/sql-data-warehouse/sql-data-warehouse-table-constraints

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

yes

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

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