Apache HBase vs SWC-DB
Apache HBase
hbase.apache.orgSWC-DB
swcdb.orgSide by side
| Figure | Apache HBase | SWC-DB |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Wide-Column Databases | 8.7 (#2) | 7.5 (#8) |
| License | HBase is distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. | The maker publishes SWC-DB under GPLv3 and invites inquiries about commercial-purpose licensing when activities are limited by GPLv3. |
| Scale | HBase is designed for tables containing billions of rows and millions of columns on commodity clusters. | The maker says the system is designed for yottabytes of data and a quadrillion base of entries. |
| Support | The HBase project team assumes no responsibility for users' clusters, configuration, or data; commercial technical support is provided by Hadoop vendors. | The maker directs users to a Google Group for discussions and help, GitHub issues for bugs or feature requests, and lists commercial support contact options. |
Plans
In their own words
Apache HBase
Apache HBase is a distributed data store for applications that need random, real-time reads and writes with strict consistency. It runs on Hadoop and HDFS, with automatic failover and sharding, and is designed to scale across commodity clusters. The project describes hosting tables with billions of rows and millions of columns. Clients can connect through a Java API or REST and Thrift gateways. Highlighted workloads include time-series and metrics, IoT telemetry, ad tech and personalization, message and audit logs, security analytics, and genomics and research. HBase is free and self-hosted, with Linux and API platforms listed; version 3.0.0 is listed as a release artifact. Operators must configure authentication and authorization because the default configuration does not enable them. Security guidance covers Kerberos, SASL, access control lists, visibility labels, and optional TLS, and recommends keeping services within a trusted network perimeter rather than exposing them to the public internet. Operating a distributed deployment requires systems, software, and networking skills.
SWC-DB
SWC-DB is a self-hosted Super Wide Column Database that the maker describes as a key-value, wide-column NoSQL and time-series database. It supports SQL, but SQL has no joins, and the system is designed for very large data volumes. Its data model uses cell keys made from lists of fractions with timestamps, with numerous columns rather than tables or namespaces. Data can have automatic or user-defined versions, ordered ascending or descending, with a configurable maximum retained. The maker describes ACID concepts for a single data entry; writes across multiple entries are not atomic as a group. Communications can use SSL, but transaction security also depends on the configured filesystem and clients supporting a secure layer. User-concept access controls are unsupported. A cluster utility can deploy, start and stop distributed clusters. Downloads include tar.xz and Debian packages, with Arch Linux AUR packages also described. SWC-DB is free under GPLv3; commercial-purpose licensing inquiries are invited for uses limited by that license.