DBMS > FoundationDB vs. Prometheus vs. QuestDB vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. Prometheus vs. QuestDB vs. Snowflake

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

Open-source Time Series DBMS and monitoring system

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

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

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	8.42
Rank	#47	Overall
	#2	Time Series DBMS

Score	2.52
Rank	#109	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

prometheus.io

questdb.io

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

prometheus.io/docs

questdb.io/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

FoundationDB

QuestDB Technology Inc

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2013

2015

2014

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

Implementation language

C++

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

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

Numeric data only

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.

Import of XML data possible

yes

Secondary indexes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

SQL with time-series extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

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

over HTTP

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

user defined functions

Triggers

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

by Federation

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

none

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID for single-table writes

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

through memory mapped files

User concepts

Access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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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