DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. NuoDB vs. Redis vs. RRDtool

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. NuoDB vs. Redis vs. RRDtool

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

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

NuoDB is a webscale distributed database that supports SQL and ACID transactions

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

Industry standard data logging and graphing tool for time series data. RRD is an acronym for round-robin database.

The data is stored in a circular buffer, thus the system storage footprint remains constant over time.

Primary database model

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

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

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.89
Rank	#198	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Score	157.80
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Score	1.87
Rank	#136	Overall
	#11	Time Series DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.3ds.com/nuodb-distributed-sql-database

redis.com
redis.io

oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

firebase.google.com/docs/database

doc.nuodb.com

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/doc

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

Tobias Oetiker

Initial release

2013

2012

2013

2009

1999

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

7.2.4, January 2024

1.8.0, 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

Open Source

GPL V2 and FLOSS

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.

Aiven for Redis: Fully managed in-memory key-value store for all your caching and speedy lookup needs.

Implementation language

C++

Implementations in Java (e.g. RRD4J) and C# available

Server operating systems

Linux

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

HP-UX
Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

Numeric data only

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.

Exporting into and restoring from XML files possible

Secondary indexes

yes

with RediSearch module

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

with RediSQL module

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

in-process shared library
Pipes

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

with librrd library
C#

with a different implementation of RRDTool
Java

with a different implementation of RRDTool
JavaScript (Node.js)

with a different implementation of RRDTool
Lua
Perl
PHP

with a wrapper library
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Java, SQL

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

data is dynamically stored/cached on the nodes where it is read/written

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

through RedisGears

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

Eventual Consistency
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

tunable commit protocol

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

yes

by using the rrdcached daemon

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

Temporary table

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

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