DBMS > Apache Impala vs. CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. MySQL vs. QuestDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. MySQL vs. QuestDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

A native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Widely used open source RDBMS

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	14.03
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	10.26
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	15.00
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	1087.72
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	2.48
Rank	#115	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

couchdb.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.mysql.com

questdb.io

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

firebase.google.com/docs/database

dev.mysql.com/doc

questdb.io/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Apache Software Foundation

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

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

QuestDB Technology Inc

Initial release

2013

2005

2012

1995

2014

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

3.3.3, December 2023

8.3.0, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Erlang

C and C++

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

Server operating systems

Linux

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
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

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL with time-series extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

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

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

View functions in JavaScript

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

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

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

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

yes

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID for single-table writes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

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, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

Access rights for users can be defined per database

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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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