DBMS > ClickHouse vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. QuestDB

System Properties Comparison ClickHouse vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. QuestDB

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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.

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	16.34
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	3.26
Rank	#92	Overall
	#13	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.52
Rank	#109	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Website

clickhouse.com

cloud.google.com/bigtable

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

questdb.io

Technical documentation

clickhouse.com/docs

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

questdb.io/docs

Developer

Clickhouse Inc.

Google

Microsoft

QuestDB Technology Inc

Initial release

2016

2015

1989

2014

Current release

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

C++

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

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

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

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

yes

SQL with time-series extensions

APIs and other access methods

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

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

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

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++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

over HTTP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

key based and custom

Sharding

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

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

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomic single-row operations

ACID

ACID for single-table writes

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.

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.

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

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

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