DBMS > Apache Spark (SQL) vs. PostgreSQL

System Properties Comparison Apache Spark (SQL) vs. PostgreSQL

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Name

Description

Apache Spark SQL is a component on top of 'Spark Core' for structured data processing

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

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Trend Chart

Score	20.40
Rank	#29	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	667.25
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Website

spark.apache.org/sql

www.postgresql.org

Technical documentation

spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html

www.postgresql.org/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Initial release

2014

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

Current release

3.5.0 ( 2.13), September 2023

16.4, August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

BSD

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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Implementation language

Scala

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

standard with numerous extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

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

Supported programming languages

Java
Python
R
Scala

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

yes, utilizing Spark Core

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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.

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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