DBMS > ClickHouse vs. CockroachDB vs. Datomic vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. RocksDB

System Properties Comparison ClickHouse vs. CockroachDB vs. Datomic vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. RocksDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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.

CockroachDB is a distributed database architected for modern cloud applications. It is wire compatible with PostgreSQL and backed by a Key-Value Store, which is either RocksDB or a purpose-built derivative, called Pebble.

Datomic builds on immutable values, supports point-in-time queries and uses 3rd party systems for durability

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

Embeddable persistent key-value store optimized for fast storage (flash and RAM)

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	16.34
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	6.15
Rank	#55	Overall
	#33	Relational DBMS

Score	1.59
Rank	#150	Overall
	#69	Relational DBMS

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	3.65
Rank	#85	Overall
	#11	Key-value stores

Website

clickhouse.com

www.cockroachlabs.com

www.datomic.com

cloud.google.com/spanner

rocksdb.org

Technical documentation

clickhouse.com/docs

www.cockroachlabs.com/docs

docs.datomic.com

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki

Developer

Clickhouse Inc.

Cockroach Labs

Cognitect

Google

Facebook, Inc.

Initial release

2016

2015

2012

2017

2013

Current release

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

23.1.1, May 2023

1.0.6735, June 2023

8.11.4, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0, commercial license available

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

Open Source

BSD

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.

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 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.

Implementation language

C++

Java, Clojure

C++

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

Linux
macOS
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

yes

dynamic schema

yes

schema-free

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

yes, wire compatible with PostgreSQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

APIs and other access methods

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

JDBC

RESTful HTTP API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

C++ API
Java API

Supported programming languages

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++
Clojure
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust

Clojure
Java

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C
C++
Go
Java
Perl
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

Triggers

By using transaction functions

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

key based and custom

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

all tables are translated to an ordered KV store and then broken down into 64MB ranges, which are then used as replicas in RAFT

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

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 using RAFT

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

yes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using external storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Couchbase and others)

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

recommended only for testing and development

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.

Role-based access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

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