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Greenplum Database VS ClickHouse

Compare Greenplum Database VS ClickHouse and see what are their differences

Greenplum Database logo Greenplum Database

Greenplum Database is an open source parallel data warehousing platform.

ClickHouse logo ClickHouse

ClickHouse is an open-source column-oriented database management system that allows generating analytical data reports in real time.
  • Greenplum Database Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-29
  • ClickHouse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-06-18

Greenplum Database features and specs

  • Scalability
    Greenplum Database is designed for massive parallel processing, allowing the system to scale horizontally by adding more nodes to handle large amounts of data efficiently.
  • Open Source
    As an open-source database, Greenplum provides a cost-effective solution for businesses looking to leverage powerful analytics without proprietary software limitations.
  • Advanced Analytics
    Greenplum supports a wide range of data science and machine learning capabilities, making it suitable for complex analytical processing and large-scale data mining.
  • Integration with Hadoop
    Greenplum offers integration capabilities with Hadoop, allowing users to effectively manage and analyze data within hybrid environments.
  • Enterprise Features
    It comes with robust enterprise features including support for ACID compliance, high availability, and backup and recovery capabilities, catering to demanding business needs.

Possible disadvantages of Greenplum Database

  • Complex Setup and Maintenance
    The initial setup and ongoing maintenance can be complex and may require specialized expertise, which could be a barrier for companies with limited technical resources.
  • Resource Intensive
    Greenplum's performance heavily relies on proper resource allocation, and it can be resource-intensive, requiring significant computational power and storage.
  • Requires Expertise
    Effective use of Greenplum often requires a skilled team to manage and optimize the database, which might not be ideal for small teams or organizations.
  • Limited Cloud-Native Features
    Compared to some modern cloud-native databases, Greenplum may lack certain features tailored to cloud environments, which can limit its integration in purely cloud-based setups.
  • Upgrade Processes
    The process for upgrading Greenplum can be complex and time-consuming, potentially causing disruptions if not carefully managed.

ClickHouse features and specs

  • High Performance
    ClickHouse is designed for fast processing of analytical queries, often performing significantly faster than traditional databases due to its columnar storage format and optimized query execution.
  • Scalability
    The system is built to handle extensive datasets by scaling horizontally through distributed cluster configurations, making it suitable for big data applications.
  • Real-time Data Ingestion
    ClickHouse supports real-time data ingestion and can immediately reflect changes in query results, which is valuable for use cases requiring instant data processing and analysis.
  • Cost Efficiency
    The open-source nature of ClickHouse makes it a cost-effective option, especially when compared to other commercial data warehouses.
  • SQL Compatibility
    ClickHouse features strong SQL support, which makes it easier for individuals with SQL expertise to transition and use the platform effectively.
  • Compression
    ClickHouse employs advanced compression algorithms that reduce storage requirements and improve query performance.

Possible disadvantages of ClickHouse

  • Complexity in Setup
    Setting up and managing ClickHouse, particularly in a distributed cluster environment, can be complex and require a higher level of expertise compared to some other database systems.
  • Limited Transaction Support
    ClickHouse is optimized for read-heavy operations and analytics but does not support full ACID transactions, which limits its use for certain transactional use cases.
  • Ecosystem and Tooling
    While the ecosystem is growing, ClickHouse still has fewer tools and third-party integrations compared to more mature databases, which can limit its utility in some environments.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running ClickHouse, especially for large datasets, can be resource-intensive, requiring significant memory and CPU resources.
  • Limited User Management
    The platform has relatively basic user management and security features, which may not meet the needs of enterprises with strict compliance and governance requirements.

Analysis of ClickHouse

Overall verdict

  • ClickHouse is a powerful and capable columnar DBMS that offers excellent performance for analytical workloads. Its open-source nature allows for flexibility and community-driven improvements, making it a strong option for organizations needing a scalable analytics platform.

Why this product is good

  • ClickHouse is considered a good choice for many use cases due to its high performance in processing large volumes of data and its efficiency in executing complex analytical queries. It is designed to work well with large datasets and provides real-time query capabilities, making it ideal for applications like business intelligence, web analytics, and IoT.

Recommended for

  • Large-scale data analysis
  • Real-time analytics dashboards
  • Businesses needing high-speed query performance
  • Web analytics platforms
  • IoT data processing
  • Financial industry for quick data aggregation

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Greenplum Database and ClickHouse)
Databases
21 21%
79% 79
Relational Databases
21 21%
79% 79
Big Data
43 43%
57% 57
Data Warehousing
32 32%
68% 68

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Greenplum Database and ClickHouse

Greenplum Database Reviews

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ClickHouse Reviews

Rockset, ClickHouse, Apache Druid, or Apache Pinot? Which is the best database for customer-facing analytics?
โ€ClickHouse is an open-source, column-oriented, distributed, and OLAP database thatโ€™s very easy to set up and maintain. โ€œBecause itโ€™s columnar, itโ€™s the best architectural approach for aggregations and for โ€˜sort byโ€™ on more than one column. It also means that group byโ€™s are very fast. Itโ€™s distributed, replication is asynchronous, and itโ€™s OLAPโ€”which means itโ€™s meant for...
Source: embeddable.com
ClickHouse vs TimescaleDB
Recently, TimescaleDB published a blog comparing ClickHouse & TimescaleDB using timescale/tsbs, a timeseries benchmarking framework. I have some experience with PostgreSQL and ClickHouse but never got the chance to play with TimescaleDB. Some of the claims about TimescaleDB made in their post are very bold, that made me even more curious. I thought itโ€™d be a great...
20+ MongoDB Alternatives You Should Know About
ClickHouse may be a great contender for moving analytical workloads from MongoDB. Much faster, and with JSON support and Nested Data Structures, it can be great choice for storing and analyzing document data.
Source: www.percona.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, ClickHouse seems to be a lot more popular than Greenplum Database. While we know about 60 links to ClickHouse, we've tracked only 4 mentions of Greenplum Database. 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.

Greenplum Database mentions (4)

  • Ask HN: It's 2023, how do you choose between MySQL and Postgres?
    Friends don't let their friends choose Mysql :) A super long time ago (decades) when I was using Oracle regularly I had to make a decision on which way to go. Although Mysql then had the mindshare I thought that Postgres was more similar to Oracle, more standards compliant, and more of a real enterprise type of DB. The rumor was also that Postgres was heavier than MySQL. Too many horror stories of lost data... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Amazon Aurora's Read/Write Capability Enhancement with Apache ShardingSphere-Proxy
    A database solution architect at AWS, with over 10 years of experience in the database industry. Lili has been involved in the R&D of the Hadoop/Hive NoSQL database, enterprise-level database DB2, distributed data warehouse Greenplum/Apache HAWQ and Amazonโ€™s cloud native database. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Whatโ€™s the Database Plus concept and what challenges can it solve?
    Today, it is normal for enterprises to leverage diversified databases. In my market of expertise, China, in the Internet industry, MySQL together with data sharding middleware is the go to architecture, with GreenPlum, HBase, Elasticsearch, Clickhouse and other big data ecosystems being auxiliary computing engine for analytical data. At the same time, some legacy systems (such as SQLServer legacy from .NET... - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Inspecting joins in PostgreSQL
    PostgreSQL is a free and advanced database system with the capacity to handle a lot of data. Itโ€™s available for very large data in several forms like Greenplum and Redshift on Amazon. It is open source and is managed by an organized and very principled community. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago

ClickHouse mentions (60)

  • Setting up ClickHouse on macOS and Testing with Node.js
    ClickHouse is an open-source columnar database built for high-performance analytical queries. This guide shows how I installed ClickHouse on macOS, ran it in the background using a lightweight nohup setup that stores logs and PID in hidden user folders, and tested it with a minimal Node.js + TypeScript example using @clickhouse/client. - Source: dev.to / 15 days ago
  • From Go to Rust: Supercharging Our ClickHouse UDFs with Alloy
    At Agnostic, we build open-source infrastructure for collaborative blockchain data platforms. One of our flagship tools is clickhouse-evm, a suite of high-performance User Defined Functions (UDFs) that brings native Ethereum decoding and querying capabilities directly into ClickHouse. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • ๐Ÿง  From Hive and Elastic to ClickHouse: What Surprised Me
    Over the past few weeks, Iโ€™ve been diving into ClickHouse โ€” and itโ€™s been full of surprises. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Cross-Compiling Haskell under NixOS with Docker
    I attended the AWS Summit 2025 in Singapore. I enjoyed the event. There were booths from various companies which I found interesting, such as GitLab and ClickHouse. More importantly, I got to meet very interesting people. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • How to Build a Streaming Deduplication Pipeline with Kafka, GlassFlow, and ClickHouse
    ClickHouse: A fast columnar database. It will be our final destination for clean data. And, for simplicity in this tutorial, we'll cleverly use it as our "memory" or state store to remember which events we've already seen recently. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Greenplum Database and ClickHouse, you can also consider the following products

Apache Hive - Apache Hive data warehouse software facilitates querying and managing large datasets residing in distributed storage.

MySQL - The world's most popular open source database

Apache Doris - Apache Doris is an open-source real-time data warehouse for big data analytics.

Microsoft Azure Data Lake - Azure Data Lake is a real-time data processing and analytics solution that works across platforms and languages.

PostgreSQL - PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system.

FME by Safe - FME is an integrated collection of Spatial ETL tools for data transformation and data translation.