Apache Impala vs TiDB: What are the differences?

What is Apache Impala? Real-time Query for Hadoop. Impala is a modern, open source, MPP SQL query engine for Apache Hadoop. Impala is shipped by Cloudera, MapR, and Amazon. With Impala, you can query data, whether stored in HDFS or Apache HBase – including SELECT, JOIN, and aggregate functions – in real time.

What is TiDB? A distributed NewSQL database compatible with MySQL protocol. Inspired by the design of Google F1, TiDB supports the best features of both traditional RDBMS and NoSQL.

Apache Impala and TiDB are primarily classified as "Big Data" and "Databases" tools respectively.

Some of the features offered by Apache Impala are:

• Do BI-style Queries on Hadoop
• Unify Your Infrastructure
• Implement Quickly

On the other hand, TiDB provides the following key features:

• Horizontal scalability
• Asynchronous schema changes
• Consistent distributed transactions

"Super fast" is the top reason why over 9 developers like Apache Impala, while over 4 developers mention "Open source" as the leading cause for choosing TiDB.

Apache Impala and TiDB are both open source tools. TiDB with 27.5K GitHub stars and 4.32K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Apache Impala with 3 GitHub stars and 4 GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Apache Impala has a broader approval, being mentioned in 18 company stacks & 87 developers stacks; compared to TiDB, which is listed in 3 company stacks and 39 developer stacks.