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Databricks VS Apache Calcite

Compare Databricks VS Apache Calcite and see what are their differences

Databricks logo Databricks

Databricks provides a Unified Analytics Platform that accelerates innovation by unifying data science, engineering and business.‎What is Apache Spark?

Apache Calcite logo Apache Calcite

Relational Databases
  • Databricks Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-14
  • Apache Calcite Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-30

Databricks features and specs

  • Unified Data Analytics Platform
    Databricks integrates various data processing and analytics tools, offering a unified environment for data engineering, machine learning, and business analytics. This integration can streamline workflows and reduce the complexity of data management.
  • Scalability
    Databricks leverages Apache Spark and other scalable technologies to handle large datasets and high computational workloads efficiently. This makes it suitable for enterprises with significant data processing needs.
  • Collaborative Environment
    The platform offers collaborative notebooks that allow data scientists, engineers, and analysts to work together in real-time. This enhances productivity and fosters better communication within teams.
  • Performance Optimization
    Databricks includes various performance optimization features such as caching, indexing, and query optimization, which can significantly speed up data processing tasks.
  • Support for Various Data Formats
    The platform supports a wide range of data formats and sources, including structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data, making it versatile and adaptable to different use cases.
  • Integration with Cloud Providers
    Databricks is designed to work seamlessly with major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, allowing users to easily integrate it into their existing cloud infrastructure.

Possible disadvantages of Databricks

  • Cost
    Databricks can be expensive, especially for large-scale deployments or high-frequency usage. It may not be the most cost-effective solution for smaller organizations or projects with limited budgets.
  • Complexity
    While powerful, Databricks can be complex to set up and manage, requiring specialized knowledge in Apache Spark and cloud infrastructure. This might lead to a steeper learning curve for new users.
  • Dependency on Cloud Providers
    Being heavily integrated with cloud providers, Databricks might face issues like vendor lock-in, where switching providers becomes difficult or costly.
  • Limited Offline Capabilities
    Databricks is primarily designed for cloud environments, which means offline or on-premise capabilities are limited, posing challenges for organizations with strict data governance policies.
  • Resource Management
    Efficiently managing and allocating resources can be challenging in Databricks, especially in large multi-user environments. Mismanagement of resources could lead to increased costs and reduced performance.

Apache Calcite features and specs

  • Query Optimization
    Calcite provides advanced query planning and optimization features, allowing for efficient execution of SQL queries across different data sources.
  • Extensibility
    The framework is highly extensible, allowing users to add custom rules and support for additional languages and data stores.
  • Support for Multiple Data Sources
    Apache Calcite can integrate with a wide range of data sources, providing a unified query interface where users can query from different systems using standard SQL.
  • Community and Open Source
    As part of the Apache Software Foundation, Calcite benefits from a vibrant open-source community that continuously improves and expands its capabilities.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Calcite

  • Complexity
    The system can be complex to set up and configure, especially for users who are not familiar with query processing infrastructure.
  • Limited Direct Data Storage
    Calcite itself does not store or manage data; it acts as an intermediary layer, which may limit its use for those looking for a standalone database solution.
  • Learning Curve
    The rich set of features and customizations can lead to a steep learning curve, requiring users to invest time to fully understand and utilize its capabilities.
  • Performance Overhead
    Given that Calcite introduces an additional layer between the application and data storage, there might be performance overheads in certain use cases.

Databricks videos

Introduction to Databricks

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Azure Databricks Tutorial | Data transformations at scale
  • Review - Databricks - Data Movement and Query

Apache Calcite videos

The Evolution of Apache Calcite and its Community - A Discussion with Julian Hyde

More videos:

  • Review - Building modern SQL query optimizers with Apache Calcite - Vladimir Ozerov

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Databricks and Apache Calcite)
Data Dashboard
96 96%
4% 4
Databases
0 0%
100% 100
Big Data Analytics
100 100%
0% 0
Relational Databases
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

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

Databricks Reviews

Jupyter Notebook & 10 Alternatives: Data Notebook Review [2023]
Databricks notebooks are a popular tool for developing code and presenting findings in data science and machine learning. Databricks Notebooks support real-time multilingual coauthoring, automatic versioning, and built-in data visualizations.
Source: lakefs.io
7 best Colab alternatives in 2023
Databricks is a platform built around Apache Spark, an open-source, distributed computing system. The Databricks Community Edition offers a collaborative workspace where users can create Jupyter notebooks. Although it doesn't offer free GPU resources, it's an excellent tool for distributed data processing and big data analytics.
Source: deepnote.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 10 AWS ETL Tools and How to Choose the Best One | Visual Flow
Databricks is a simple, fast, and collaborative analytics platform based on Apache Spark with ETL capabilities. It accelerates innovation by bringing together data science and data science businesses. It is a fully managed open-source version of Apache Spark analytics with optimized connectors to storage platforms for the fastest data access.
Source: visual-flow.com
Top Big Data Tools For 2021
Now Azure Databricks achieves 50 times better performance thanks to a highly optimized version of Spark. Databricks also enables real-time co-authoring and automates versioning. Besides, it features runtimes optimized for machine learning that include many popular libraries, such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, Keras, etc.

Apache Calcite Reviews

We have no reviews of Apache Calcite yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Databricks should be more popular than Apache Calcite. It has been mentiond 18 times since March 2021. 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.

Databricks mentions (18)

  • Platform Engineering Abstraction: How to Scale IaC for Enterprise
    Vendors like Confluent, Snowflake, Databricks, and dbt are improving the developer experience with more automation and integrations, but they often operate independently. This fragmentation makes standardizing multi-directional integrations across identity and access management, data governance, security, and cost control even more challenging. Developing a standardized, secure, and scalable solution for... - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • dolly-v2-12b
    Dolly-v2-12bis a 12 billion parameter causal language model created by Databricks that is derived from EleutherAI’s Pythia-12b and fine-tuned on a ~15K record instruction corpus generated by Databricks employees and released under a permissive license (CC-BY-SA). Source: about 2 years ago
  • Clickstream data analysis with Databricks and Redpanda
    Global organizations need a way to process the massive amounts of data they produce for real-time decision making. They often utilize event-streaming tools like Redpanda with stream-processing tools like Databricks for this purpose. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • DeWitt Clause, or Can You Benchmark %DATABASE% and Get Away With It
    Databricks, a data lakehouse company founded by the creators of Apache Spark, published a blog post claiming that it set a new data warehousing performance record in 100 TB TPC-DS benchmark. It was also mentioned that Databricks was 2.7x faster and 12x better in terms of price performance compared to Snowflake. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • A Quick Start to Databricks on AWS
    Go to Databricks and click the Try Databricks button. Fill in the form and Select AWS as your desired platform afterward. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
View more

Apache Calcite mentions (12)

  • Data diffs: Algorithms for explaining what changed in a dataset (2022)
    > Make diff work on more than just SQLite. Another way of doing this that I've been wanting to do for a while is to implement the DIFF operator in Apache Calcite[0]. Using Calcite, DIFF could be implemented as rewrite rules to generate the appropriate SQL to be directly executed against the database or the DIFF operator can be implemented outside of the database (which the original paper shows is more efficient).... - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • How to manipulate SQL string programmatically?
    Use a SQL Parser like sqlglot or Apache Calcite to compile user's query into an AST. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Parsing SQL
    One parser I think deserves a mention is the one from Apache Calcite[0]. Calcite does more than parsing, there are a number of users who pick up Calcite just for the parser. While the default parser attempts to adhere strictly to the SQL standard, of interest is also the Babel parser, which aims to be as permissive as possible in accepting different dialects of SQL. Disclaimer: I am on the PMC of Apache Calcite,... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Semantic Diff for SQL
    Apache Calcite can do this, though it's not a beginner-friendly task: https://calcite.apache.org/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
  • OctoSQL allows you to join data from different sources using SQL
    You should look at Apache Calcite[0]. Like OctoSQL, you can join data from different data sources. It's also relatively easy to add your own data sources ("adapters" in Calcite lingo) and rules to efficiently query those sources. Calcite already has adapters that do things like read from HTML tables over HTTP, files on your file system, running processes, etc. This is in addition to connecting to a bunch of... - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Databricks and Apache Calcite, you can also consider the following products

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

Presto DB - Distributed SQL Query Engine for Big Data (by Facebook)

Looker - Looker makes it easy for analysts to create and curate custom data experiences—so everyone in the business can explore the data that matters to them, in the context that makes it truly meaningful.

SQLite - SQLite Home Page

Jupyter - Project Jupyter exists to develop open-source software, open-standards, and services for interactive computing across dozens of programming languages. Ready to get started? Try it in your browser Install the Notebook.

Open Data Hub - OpenDataHub