DBMS > ClickHouse vs. IBM Db2 vs. IRONdb vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

System Properties Comparison ClickHouse vs. IBM Db2 vs. IRONdb vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

IRONdb seems to be discontinued. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines 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.

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

A distributed Time Series DBMS with a focus on scalability, fault tolerance and operational simplicity

High performance Time Series DBMS

Elastic, large scale data warehouse service leveraging the broad eco-system of SQL Server

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Time Series DBMS

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Relational DBMS

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

Score	16.34
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	7.55
Rank	#53	Overall
	#3	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	20.56
Rank	#31	Overall
	#19	Relational DBMS

Website

clickhouse.com

www.ibm.com/products/db2

www.circonus.com/solutions/time-series-database/

kx.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/synapse-analytics

Technical documentation

clickhouse.com/docs

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

docs.circonus.com/irondb/category/getting-started

code.kx.com

docs.microsoft.com/azure/synapse-analytics

Developer

Clickhouse Inc.

IBM

Circonus LLC.

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Microsoft

Initial release

2016

1983

host version

2017

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2016

Current release

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

12.1, October 2016

V0.10.20, January 2018

3.6, May 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

free version is available

commercial

free 32-bit version

commercial

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.

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 Clickhouse: Managed cloud data warehousing with high-speed analytics.

Implementation language

C++

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Linux

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

text, numeric, histograms

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

table attribute 'grouped'

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

yes

SQL-like query language (Circonus Analytics Query Language: CAQL)

SQL-like query language (q)

yes

APIs and other access methods

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

HTTP API

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

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#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

.Net
C
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala

C
C#
C++
Go
J
Java
JavaScript
Lua
MatLab
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Scala

C#
Java
PHP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

yes, in Lua

user defined functions

Transact SQL

Triggers

yes

with views

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

key based and custom

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Automatic, metric affinity per node

horizontal partitioning

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.

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

configurable replication factor, datacenter aware

Source-replica replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

similar paradigm used for internal processing

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Immediate consistency per node, eventual consistency across nodes

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/synapse-analytics/sql-data-warehouse/sql-data-warehouse-table-constraints

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.

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.

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

rights management via user accounts

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
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Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
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Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
» more

Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
» more

Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
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Licensing and pricing models

upon request
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.