DBMS > Apache Pinot vs. ClickHouse vs. CouchDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. MySQL

System Properties Comparison Apache Pinot vs. ClickHouse vs. CouchDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. MySQL

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Realtime distributed OLAP datastore, designed to answer OLAP queries with low latency

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.

A native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Widely used open source RDBMS

Primary database model

column oriented

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store

If a column is of type dynamic docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types/dynamic then it's possible to add arbitrary JSON documents in this cell
Event Store

this is the general usage pattern at Microsoft. Billing, Logs, Telemetry events are stored in ADX and the state of an individual entity is defined by the arg_max(timestamps)
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

support for complex search expressions docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/parseoperator FTS, Geospatial docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/geo-point-to-geohash-function distributed search -> ADX acts as a distributed search engine
Time Series DBMS

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer/time-series-analysis

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	0.38
Rank	#275	Overall
	#126	Relational DBMS

Score	15.55
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	8.30
Rank	#47	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	1061.34
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Website

pinot.apache.org

clickhouse.com

couchdb.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.mysql.com

Technical documentation

docs.pinot.apache.org

clickhouse.com/docs

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer

dev.mysql.com/doc

Developer

Apache Software Foundation and contributors

Clickhouse Inc.

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer

Microsoft

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Initial release

2015

2016

2005

2019

1995

Current release

1.0.0, September 2023

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

3.3.3, December 2023

cloud service with continuous releases

8.4.0, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

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.

Aiven for Clickhouse: Managed cloud data warehousing with high-speed analytics.
DoubleCloud: Fully managed ClickHouse alongside best-in-class managed open-source services to build analytics at scale.
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.

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Erlang

C and C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java JDK11 or higher

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

bool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types

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

via views

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

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

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Microsoft SQL Server communication protocol (MS-TDS)
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
Python

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

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PowerShell
Python
R

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

View functions in JavaScript

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/management/updatepolicy

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning

key based and custom

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

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

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Spark connector (open source): github.com/Azure/azure-kusto-spark

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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 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.

Access rights for users can be defined per database

Azure Active Directory Authentication

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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