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Apache Parquet VS Amazon Redshift

Compare Apache Parquet VS Amazon Redshift and see what are their differences

Apache Parquet logo Apache Parquet

Apache Parquet is a columnar storage format available to any project in the Hadoop ecosystem.

Amazon Redshift logo Amazon Redshift

Learn about Amazon Redshift cloud data warehouse.
  • Apache Parquet Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-06-17
  • Amazon Redshift Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-14

Apache Parquet features and specs

  • Columnar Storage
    Apache Parquet uses columnar storage, which allows for efficient retrieval of only the data you need, reducing I/O and improving query performance on large datasets.
  • Compression
    Parquet files support efficient compression and encoding schemes, resulting in significant storage savings and less data to transfer over the network.
  • Compatibility
    It is compatible with the Hadoop ecosystem, including tools like Apache Spark, Hive, and Impala, making it versatile for big data processing.
  • Schema Evolution
    Parquet supports schema evolution, allowing changes to the schema without breaking existing data, which helps in maintaining long-lived data pipelines.
  • Efficient Read Performance for Aggregations
    Due to its columnar layout, Parquet is highly efficient for processing queries that aggregate data across columns, such as SUM and AVERAGE.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Parquet

  • Write Performance
    Writing data to Parquet can be slower compared to row-based formats, particularly for small inserts or updates, due to the overhead of encoding and compression.
  • Complexity in File Management
    Managing and partitioning Parquet files to optimize performance can become complex, particularly as datasets grow in size and complexity.
  • Not Ideal for All Workloads
    Workloads that require frequent row-level updates or involve small queries might be less efficient with Parquet due to its columnar nature.
  • Learning Curve
    The need to understand the nuances of columnar storage, encoding, and compression can pose a learning curve for teams new to Parquet.

Amazon Redshift features and specs

  • Scalability
    Amazon Redshift allows you to scale your data warehouse up or down easily based on your needs with just a few clicks or by using the API, providing flexibility to handle varying workloads.
  • Performance
    Redshift uses columnar storage, parallel processing, and efficient data compression techniques to deliver high performance for complex queries and large datasets.
  • Integration
    It seamlessly integrates with various AWS services like S3, DynamoDB, and QuickSight, making it easier to build a comprehensive data ecosystem.
  • Cost-effective
    Redshift offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model with no upfront costs, and you can save more with reserved instances, making it cost-effective for many businesses.
  • Security
    It includes features like encryption, Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), and compliance certifications (such as SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, and more) to ensure data security and compliance.
  • Managed Service
    Amazon Redshift is a fully managed service, so it takes care of managing, monitoring, and scaling the infrastructure, allowing you to focus on your data and insights.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon Redshift

  • Complexity
    Although Redshift is powerful, it can be complex to set up, configure, and optimize for best performance, requiring knowledge and experience in data warehousing.
  • Cost for Unused Resources
    While Redshift is cost-effective for large-scale operations, costs can add up quickly if resources are not managed properly, especially with long-running clusters that are under-utilized.
  • Maintenance Windows
    Despite being a managed service, maintenance windows and updates can occasionally lead to downtime or performance degradation, impacting availability.
  • Data Transfer Costs
    Transferring data in and out of Redshift can incur additional costs, particularly if large volumes of data are involved, which can affect overall budget planning.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Using Amazon Redshift ties you to the AWS ecosystem, which could be a disadvantage if you are considering a multi-cloud strategy or planning to switch providers in the future.

Analysis of Amazon Redshift

Overall verdict

  • Amazon Redshift is generally considered a good solution for businesses seeking a robust, scalable, and cost-effective data warehousing service within the AWS cloud environment. However, its suitability may vary depending on specific organizational needs and workloads.

Why this product is good

  • Amazon Redshift is a popular data warehousing service within the AWS ecosystem, known for its scalability, ease of integration with other AWS services, and relatively low cost. It provides fast query performance for large datasets and offers features like columnar storage, parallel query execution, and advanced compression. These attributes make it an attractive choice for organizations looking to perform complex analytics and data processing tasks.

Recommended for

  • Organizations already utilizing AWS services and seeking seamless integration.
  • Businesses requiring scalable data warehousing at a competitive price.
  • Data-driven companies looking to perform fast, complex analytics on large datasets.
  • Teams needing flexible management options that can grow with their data storage needs.

Apache Parquet videos

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Amazon Redshift videos

Getting Started with Amazon Redshift - AWS Online Tech Talks

More videos:

  • Review - Amazon Redshift Materialized Views
  • Tutorial - Amazon Redshift Tutorial | Amazon Redshift Architecture | AWS Tutorial For Beginners | Simplilearn

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Apache Parquet and Amazon Redshift)
Databases
31 31%
69% 69
Big Data
31 31%
69% 69
Data Management
23 23%
77% 77
NoSQL Databases
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Apache Parquet and Amazon Redshift

Apache Parquet Reviews

We have no reviews of Apache Parquet yet.
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Amazon Redshift Reviews

Data Warehouse Tools
No, SQL (Structured Query Language) is not a data warehouse itself. SQL is a programming language used for managing and querying data stored in relational database management systems (RDBMS) and data warehouses. Many data warehouse solutions, such as Peliqan, Amazon Redshift, and PostgreSQL, support SQL for querying and analyzing data within the data warehouse
Source: peliqan.io
Top 6 Cloud Data Warehouses in 2023
Coined in November 2021, Amazon Redshift was launched as a fully managed cloud data warehouse that can handle petabyte-scale data. While it was not the first cloud data warehouse, it became the first to proliferate in the market share after a large-scale adoption. Redshift uses SQL dialect based on PostgreSQL, which is well-known by many analysts globally, and its...
Source: geekflare.com
Top 5 Cloud Data Warehouses in 2023
Jan 11, 2023 The 5 best cloud data warehouse solutions in 2023Google BigQuerySource: https://cloud.google.com/bigqueryBest for:Top features:Pros:Cons:Pricing:SnowflakeBest for:Top features:Pros:Cons:Pricing:Amazon RedshiftSource: https://aws.amazon.com/redshift/Best for:Top features:Pros:Cons:Pricing:FireboltSource: https://www.firebolt.io/Best for:Top...
Top 5 BigQuery Alternatives: A Challenge of Complexity
As the most proven tool in this category, Amazon Redshift is a fully managed cloud-based data warehouse used to collect and store data. Like BigQuery, Redshift seamlessly integrates with multiple products and ETL services.
Source: blog.panoply.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Amazon Redshift might be a bit more popular than Apache Parquet. We know about 29 links to it since March 2021 and only 25 links to Apache Parquet. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Apache Parquet mentions (25)

  • ๐Ÿ”ฅ Simulating Course Schedules 600x Faster with Web Workers in CourseCast
    If there was a way to package and compress the Excel spreadsheet in a web-friendly format, then there's nothing stopping us from loading the entire dataset in the browser!1 Sure enough, the Parquet file format was specifically designed for efficient portability. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • How to Pitch Your Boss to Adopt Apache Iceberg?
    Iceberg decouples storage from compute. That means your data isnโ€™t trapped inside one proprietary system. Instead, it lives in open file formats (like Apache Parquet) and is managed by an open, vendor-neutral metadata layer (Apache Iceberg). - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Processing data with โ€œData Prep Kitโ€ (part 2)
    Data prep kit github repository: https://github.com/data-prep-kit/data-prep-kit?tab=readme-ov-file Quick start guide: https://github.com/data-prep-kit/data-prep-kit/blob/dev/doc/quick-start/contribute-your-own-transform.md Provided samples and examples: https://github.com/data-prep-kit/data-prep-kit/tree/dev/examples Parquet: https://parquet.apache.org/. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • ๐Ÿ”ฌPublic docker images Trivy scans as duckdb datas on Kaggle
    Deliver nice ready-to-use data as duckdb, parquet and csv. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Introducing Promptwright: Synthetic Dataset Generation with Local LLMs
    Push the dataset to hugging face in parquet format. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
View more

Amazon Redshift mentions (29)

  • How to Pitch Your Boss to Adopt Apache Iceberg?
    If your team is managing large volumes of historical data using platforms like Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, or Google BigQuery, youโ€™ve probably noticed a shift happening in the data engineering world. A new generation of data infrastructure is forming โ€” one that prioritizes openness, interoperability, and cost-efficiency. At the center of that shift is Apache Iceberg. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Everyone Uses Postgresโ€ฆ But Why?
    Postgres can be easily adapted to build highly tailored solutions. For instance, Amazon Redshift can be considered a highly scalable fork of Postgres. Itโ€™s a distributed database focusing on OLAP workloads that you can deploy in AWS. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • From ETL and ELT to Reverse ETL
    With the transition from ETL to ELT, data warehouses have ascended to the role of data custodians, centralizing customer data collected from fragmented systems. This pivotal shift has been enabled by a suite of powerful tools: Fivetran and Airbyte streamline the extraction and loading, DBT handles the transformation, and robust warehousing solutions like Snowflake and Redshift store the data. While traditionally... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Choosing Between a Streaming Database and a Stream Processing Framework in Python
    They differ from conventional analytic databases like Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, and Oracle in several ways. Conventional databases are batch-oriented, loading data in defined windows like hourly, daily, weekly, and so on. While loading data, conventional databases lock the tables, making the newly loaded data unavailable until the batch load is fully completed. Streaming databases continuously receive new... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Choosing the Right AWS Database: A Guide for Modern Applications
    Data warehousing is the process of storing and analyzing large volumes of data for business intelligence and analytics purposes. AWS offers a fully managed data warehousing service called Amazon Redshift that can handle petabyte-scale data warehouses with ease. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Apache Parquet and Amazon Redshift, you can also consider the following products

Apache Arrow - Apache Arrow is a cross-language development platform for in-memory data.

Google BigQuery - A fully managed data warehouse for large-scale data analytics.

Apache Spark - Apache Spark is an engine for big data processing, with built-in modules for streaming, SQL, machine learning and graph processing.

Microsoft SQL Server - Microsoft Azure is an open, flexible, enterprise-grade cloud computing platform. Move faster, do more, and save money with IaaS + PaaS. Try for FREE.

DuckDB - DuckDB is an in-process SQL OLAP database management system

Snowflake - Snowflake is the only data platform built for the cloud for all your data & all your users. Learn more about our purpose-built SQL cloud data warehouse.