DBMS > Apache Phoenix vs. ClickHouse vs. Postgres-XL vs. Vertica vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Phoenix vs. ClickHouse vs. Postgres-XL vs. Vertica vs. VoltDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A scale-out RDBMS with evolutionary schema built on Apache HBase

A high-performance, column-oriented SQL DBMS for online analytical processing (OLAP) that uses all available system resources to their full potential to process each analytical query as fast as possible. It is available as both an open-source software and a cloud offering.

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

Cloud or off-cloud analytical database and query engine for structured and semi-structured streaming and batch data. Machine learning platform with built-in algorithms, data preparation capabilities, and model evaluation and management via SQL or Python.

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

Column oriented

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

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

Score	2.06
Rank	#123	Overall
	#58	Relational DBMS

Score	15.55
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	0.53
Rank	#254	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	10.06
Rank	#42	Overall
	#26	Relational DBMS

Score	1.47
Rank	#157	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

phoenix.apache.org

clickhouse.com/docs

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

vertica.com/documentation

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Clickhouse Inc.

OpenText

previously Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2014

2016

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2005

2010

Current release

5.0-HBase2, July 2018 and 4.15-HBase1, December 2019

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

10 R1, October 2018

12.0.3, January 2023

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Mozilla public license

commercial

Limited community edition free

Open Source

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

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

on-premises, all major clouds - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and containers

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

DoubleCloud: Fully managed ClickHouse alongside best-in-class managed open-source services to build analytics at scale.
Aiven for Clickhouse: Managed cloud data warehousing with high-speed analytics.
ClickHouse Cloud: Get the performance you love from open source ClickHouse in a serverless offering that takes care of the details so you can spend more time getting insight out of the fastest database on earth.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Java, C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Unix
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

Linux
macOS

Linux

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

yes

late-bound, schema-on-read capabilities

yes

Yes, but also semi-structure/unstructured data storage, and complex hierarchical data (like Parquet) stored and/or queried.

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

No Indexes Required. Different internal optimization strategy, but same functionality included.

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

Full 1999 standard plus machine learning, time series and geospatial. Over 650 functions.

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

gRPC
HTTP REST
JDBC
MySQL wire protocol
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Proprietary protocol

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

ADO.NET
JDBC
Kafka Connector
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spark Connector
vSQL

character-based, interactive, front-end utility

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Go
Groovy
Java
PHP
Python
Scala

3rd party library
C++
Elixir

3rd party library
Go

3rd party library
Java

3rd party library
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party library
Kotlin

3rd party library
Nim

3rd party library
Perl

3rd party library
PHP

3rd party library
Python

3rd party library
R

3rd party library
Ruby

3rd party library
Rust
Scala

3rd party library

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

yes

user defined functions

yes, PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, with minor differences

Java

Triggers

yes

yes, called Custom Alerts

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

key based and custom

horizontal partitioning

horizontal partitioning, hierarchical partitioning

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Asynchronous and synchronous physical replication; geographically distributed replicas; support for object storages.

Multi-source replication

One, or more copies of data replicated across nodes, or object-store used for repository.

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Hadoop integration

Bi-directional Spark integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency or 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

MVCC

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

User concepts

Access control

Access Control Lists (using HBase ACL) for RBAC, integration with Apache Ranger for RBAC & ABAC, multi-tenancy

Access rights for users and roles. Column and row based policies. Quotas and resource limits. Pluggable authentication with LDAP and Kerberos. Password based, X.509 certificate, and SSH key authentication.

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard; supports Kerberos, LDAP, Ident and hash

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Deploy-anywhere database for large-scale analytical deployments. Deploy off-cloud,...
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Competitive advantages

Fast, scalable, and capable of high concurrency. Separation of compute/storage leverages...
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Typical application scenarios

Communication and network analytics, Embedded analytics, Fraud monitoring and Risk...
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Key customers

Abiba Systems, Adform, adMarketplace, AmeriPride, Anritsu, AOL, Avito, Auckland Transport,...
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Licensing and pricing models

Cost-based models and subscription-based models are both available. One license is...
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