Apache HBase vs. PostgreSQL

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
HBase
Score 7.3 out of 10
N/A
The Apache HBase project's goal is the hosting of very large tables -- billions of rows X millions of columns -- atop clusters of commodity hardware. Apache HBase is an open-source, distributed, versioned, non-relational database modeled after Google's Bigtable.N/A
PostgreSQL
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
PostgreSQL (alternately Postgres) is a free and open source object-relational database system boasting over 30 years of active development, reliability, feature robustness, and performance. It supports SQL and is designed to support various workloads flexibly.N/A
Pricing
Apache HBasePostgreSQL
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HBasePostgreSQL
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache HBasePostgreSQL
Considered Both Products
HBase
Chose Apache HBase
Cassandra os great for writes. But with large datasets, depending, not as great as HBASE. Cassandra does support parquet now. HBase still performance issues. Cassandra has use cases of being used as time series. HBase, it fails miserably. GeoSpatial data, Hbase does work …
PostgreSQL

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Apache HBasePostgreSQL
NoSQL Databases
Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of Product A and Product B
Apache HBase
7.7
5 Ratings
13% below category average
PostgreSQL
-
Ratings
Performance7.15 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability7.85 Ratings00 Ratings
Concurrency7.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Security7.85 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability8.65 Ratings00 Ratings
Data model flexibility7.15 Ratings00 Ratings
Deployment model flexibility8.25 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache HBasePostgreSQL
Small Businesses
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.3 out of 10
Redis™*
Redis™*
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.3 out of 10
Redis™*
Redis™*
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.3 out of 10
Redis™*
Redis™*
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache HBasePostgreSQL
Likelihood to Recommend
7.7
(10 ratings)
8.7
(53 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.9
(10 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(6 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(7 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache HBasePostgreSQL
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache
Hbase is well suited for large organizations with millions of operations performing on tables, real-time lookup of records in a table, range queries, random reads and writes and online analytics operations. Hbase cannot be replaced for traditional databases as it cannot support all the features, CPU and memory intensive. Observed increased latency when using with MapReduce job joins.
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PostgreSQL Global Development Group
PostgreSQL, unlike other databases, is user-friendly and uses an open-source database. Ideal for relational databases, they can be accessed when speed and efficiency are required. It enables high-availability and disaster recovery replication from instance to instance. PostgreSQL can store data in a JSON format, including hashes, keys, and values. Multi-platform compatibility is also a big selling point. We could, however, use all the DBMS’s cores. While it works well in fast environments, it can be problematic in slower ones or cause multiple master replication.
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Pros
Apache
  • Scalability. HBase can scale to trillions of records.
  • Fast. HBase is extremely fast to scan values or retrieve individual records by key.
  • HBase can be accessed by standard SQL via Apache Phoenix.
  • Integrated. I can easily store and retrieve data from HBase using Apache Spark.
  • It is easy to set up DR and backups.
  • Ingest. It is easy to ingest data into HBase via shell, Java, Apache NiFi, Storm, Spark, Flink, Python and other means.
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PostgreSQL Global Development Group
  • The stability it offers, its speed of response and its resource management is excellent even in complex database environments and with low-resource machines.
  • The large amount of resources it has in addition to the many own and third-party tools that are compatible that make productivity greatly increase.
  • The adaptability in various environments, whether distributed or not, [is a] complete set of configuration options which allows to greatly customize the work configuration according to the needs that are required.
  • The excellent handling of referential and transactional integrity, its internal security scheme, the ease with which we can create backups are some of the strengths that can be mentioned.
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Cons
Apache
  • There are very few commands in HBase.
  • Stored procedures functionality is not available so it should be implemented.
  • HBase is CPU and Memory intensive with large sequential input or output access while as Map Reduce jobs are primarily input or output bound with fixed memory. HBase integrated with Map-reduce jobs will result in random latencies.
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PostgreSQL Global Development Group
  • The query syntax for JSON fields is unwieldy when you start getting into complex queries with many joins.
  • I wish there was a distinction (a flag) you could set for automated scripts vs working in the psql CLI, which would provide an 'Are you sure you want to do X?' type prompt if your query is likely to affect more than a certain number of rows. Especially on updates/deletes. Setting the flag in the headless(scripted) flow would disable the prompt.
  • Better documentation around JSON and Array aggregation, with more examples of how the data is transformed.
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Likelihood to Renew
Apache
There's really not anything else out there that I've seen comparable for my use cases. HBase has never proven me wrong. Some companies align their whole business on HBase and are moving all of their infrastructure from other database engines to HBase. It's also open source and has a very collaborative community.
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PostgreSQL Global Development Group
As a needed software for day to day development activities
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Usability
Apache
No answers on this topic
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Postgresql is the best tool out there for relational data so I have to give it a high rating when it comes to analytics, data availability and consistency, so on and so forth. SQL is also a relatively consistent language so when it comes to building new tables and loading data in from the OLTP database, there are enough tools where we can perform ETL on a scalable basis.
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Reliability and Availability
Apache
No answers on this topic
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
PostgreSQL's availability is top notch. Apart from connection time-out for an idle user, the database is super reliable.
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Performance
Apache
No answers on this topic
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
The data queries are relatively quick for a small to medium sized table. With complex joins, and a wide and deep table however, the performance of the query has room for improvement.
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Support Rating
Apache
No answers on this topic
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
There are several companies that you can contract for technical support, like EnterpriseDB or Percona, both first level in expertise and commitment to the software.
But we do not have contracts with them, we have done all the way from googling to forums, and never have a problem that we cannot resolve or pass around. And for dozens of projects and more than 15 years now.
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Online Training
Apache
No answers on this topic
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
The online training is request based. Had there been recorded videos available online for potential users to benefit from, I could have rated it higher. The online documentation however is very helpful. The online documentation PDF is downloadable and allows users to pace their own learning. With examples and code snippets, the documentation is great starting point.
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Implementation Rating
Apache
No answers on this topic
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
The online documentation of the PostgreSQL product is elaborate and takes users step by step.
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Alternatives Considered
Apache
Cassandra os great for writes. But with large datasets, depending, not as great as HBASE. Cassandra does support parquet now. HBase still performance issues. Cassandra has use cases of being used as time series. HBase, it fails miserably. GeoSpatial data, Hbase does work to an extent. HA between the two are almost the same.
Read full review
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Postgres stacks up just [fine] along the other big players in the RDBMS world. It's very popular for a reason. It's very close to MySQL in terms of cost and features - I'd pick either solution and be just as happy. Compared to Oracle it is a MUCH cheaper solution that is just as usable.
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Scalability
Apache
No answers on this topic
PostgreSQL Global Development Group
The DB is reliable, scalable, easy to use and resolves most DB needs
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Return on Investment
Apache
  • As Hbase is a noSql database, here we don't have transaction support and we cannot do many operations on the data.
  • Not having the feature of primary or a composite primary key is an issue as the architecture to be defined cannot be the same legacy type. Also the transaction concept is not applicable here.
  • The way data is printed on console is not so user-friendly. So we had to use some abstraction over HBase (eg apache phoenix) which means there is one new component to handle.
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PostgreSQL Global Development Group
  • The user-role system has saved us tons of time and thus money. As I mentioned in the "Use Case" section, Postgres is not only used by engineering but also finance to measure how much to charge customers and customer support to debug customer issues. Sure, it's not easy for non-technical employees to psql in and view raw tables, but it has saved engineering hundreds of man-hours that would have had to be spent on building equivalent tools to serve finance or customer support.
  • It provides incredibly trustworthy storage for wherever customer data dumped in. In our 6 years of Postgres existence, we have not lost a byte of customer data due to Postgres messing up a transaction or during the multiple times the hard-drives failed (thanks to ACID compliance!).
  • This is less significant, but Postgres is also quite easy to manage (unless you are going above and beyond to squeeze out every last bit of performance). There's not much to configure, and the out of the box settings are quite sane. That has saved us engineers lots of time that would have gone into Postgres administration.
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