DBMS > PostgreSQL vs. SingleStore vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison PostgreSQL vs. SingleStore vs. Snowflake

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

MySQL wire-compliant distributed RDBMS that combines an in-memory row-oriented and a disc-based column-oriented storage with patented universal storage to handle transactional and analytical workloads in one single table type

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

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

Score	674.32
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	3.69
Rank	#70	Overall
	#37	Relational DBMS

Score	172.01
Rank	#6	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

www.postgresql.org

www.singlestore.com

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

www.postgresql.org/docs

docs.singlestore.com

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

SingleStore Inc.

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2013

2014

Current release

16.4, August 2024

8.5, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

BSD

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

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++, Go

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux

64 bit version required

hosted

Data scheme

yes

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

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard with numerous extensions

yes

but no triggers and foreign keys

yes

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Cluster Management API

as HTTP Rest and CLI
HTTP API
JDBC
MongoDB API
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Bash
C
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

yes

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Sharding

hash partitioning

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Source-replica replication

stores two copies of each physical data partition on two separate nodes

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can define user-defined aggregate functions for map-reduce-style calculations

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

All updates are persistent, including those to disk-based columnstores and memory-based row stores. Transaction commits are supported via write-ahead log.

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Fine grained access control via users, groups and roles

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

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