DBMS > ClickHouse vs. FoundationDB vs. MySQL vs. QuestDB vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison ClickHouse vs. FoundationDB vs. MySQL vs. QuestDB vs. TimescaleDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

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.

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

Widely used open source RDBMS

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	15.55
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	1.06
Rank	#185	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	1061.34
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	2.70
Rank	#105	Overall
	#8	Time Series DBMS

Score	4.46
Rank	#71	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Website

clickhouse.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.mysql.com

questdb.io

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

clickhouse.com/docs

apple.github.io/foundationdb

dev.mysql.com/doc

questdb.io/docs

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Clickhouse Inc.

FoundationDB

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

QuestDB Technology Inc

Timescale

Initial release

2016

2013

1995

2014

2017

Current release

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

6.2.28, November 2020

8.4.0, April 2024

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

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

C++

C and C++

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL with time-series extensions

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

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

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

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

in SQL-layer only

yes

proprietary syntax

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

key based and custom

Sharding

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

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

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID for single-table writes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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.

yes

through memory mapped files

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.

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

News

QuestDB 8.0: Major Release
23 May 2024

QuestDB and Raspberry Pi 5 benchmark, a pocket-sized powerhouse
8 May 2024

Build your own resource monitor with QuestDB and Grafana
6 May 2024

Does "vpmovzxbd" Scare You? Here's Why it Doesn't Have To
12 April 2024

Create an ADS-B flight radar with QuestDB and a Raspberry Pi
8 April 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.