DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Firebird vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Firebird vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. VoltDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	14.03
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	21.06
Rank	#31	Overall
	#19	Relational DBMS

Score	829.80
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	1.46
Rank	#159	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

www.firebirdsql.org

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

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

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

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Firebird Foundation

Microsoft

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2013

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1989

2010

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

5.0.0, January 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

C and C++

C++

Java, C++

Server operating systems

Linux

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

yes

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

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

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

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

PSQL

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

Java

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

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

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Snapshots and command logging

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, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

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