DBMS > Apache Impala vs. ClickHouse vs. CouchDB vs. Firebird vs. MySQL

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. ClickHouse vs. CouchDB vs. Firebird vs. MySQL

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

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.

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

Widely used open source RDBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Secondary database models

Document store

Time Series DBMS

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	14.03
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	16.20
Rank	#37	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	10.26
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	21.06
Rank	#31	Overall
	#19	Relational DBMS

Score	1087.72
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

clickhouse.com/docs

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

dev.mysql.com/doc

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Clickhouse Inc.

Apache Software Foundation

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

Firebird Foundation

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Initial release

2013

2016

2005

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1995

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

v23.12.1.1368-stable, December 2023

3.3.3, December 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

8.3.0, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

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

Implementation language

C++

Erlang

C and C++

Server operating systems

Linux

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

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

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

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

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

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

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

yes

View functions in JavaScript

PSQL

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

key based and custom

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

none

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

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

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

Eventual 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

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

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, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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