Apache Hive vs Exasol
Apache Hive
hive.apache.org
Exasol
exasol.comSide by side
| Figure | Apache Hive | Exasol |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $3.30/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 18 |
| Spec score · Analytics Databases | 9.0 (#4) | 9.2 (#1) |
| Spec score · Big Data Analytics Software | 8.9 (#4) | 9.0 (#3) |
| Spec score · Data Warehouse Software | 9.0 (#4) | 9.2 (#3) |
| Spec score · OLAP Databases | 8.9 (#5) | 9.1 (#2) |
| Authentication | HiveServer2 supports unauthenticated modes plus Kerberos, LDAP, PAM and pluggable custom authentication. | Documented database authentication methods include passwords, LDAP/Active Directory, Kerberos single sign-on and OpenID. |
| Deployment | The official quickstart provides Docker instructions for running HiveServer2 and the Metastore in a container. | Exasol lists on-premises, hybrid, and fully managed SaaS deployment options; on-premises environments can include air-gapped setups. |
| Integrations | The project site names Spark, Presto, and Impala as integrations; it also describes Apache Ranger for authorization and Apache Atlas for lineage and governance. | Official ecosystem documentation lists BI integrations including Power BI, Tableau, Looker, Qlik Sense, SAS, Superset, Yellowfin and Amazon QuickSight. |
| Rating on TrustRadius | 8 out of 10 from 35 reviews. | 8.6 out of 10 from 4 reviews |
| Security | The site describes Kerberos authentication, fine-grained access control, and audit logging; HiveServer2 documentation also lists LDAP, PAM, and custom authentication options. | Exasol states that it is ISO/IEC 27001 certified and describes controls including access control and incident response processes. |
| What it does | Apache Hive is distributed data-warehouse software for reading, writing and managing very large datasets in distributed storage through SQL. | Exasol is an analytics database designed for high-concurrency analytics, data warehousing, AI and machine-learning workloads. |
Plans
Exasol
- XS$3.30 a month
- S$6.60 a month
- M$13.20 a month
- L$26.40 a month
- XL$52.80 a month
- 2XL$105.60 a month
- 3XL$158.40 a month
- Storage$25 a month
- Exasol Community EditionFree
- Exasol PersonalFree
In their own words
Apache Hive
Apache Hive is a distributed data warehouse system for reading, writing, and managing large datasets with SQL. Its Metastore keeps shared metadata for tables and partitions and serves clients including Hive, Impala, and Spark; HiveServer2 supports concurrent clients through JDBC and ODBC. Hive provides full ACID transactions for ORC tables and insert-only transactions for other formats. Documented storage options include S3, Azure Data Lake, and Google Cloud Storage, and Hive supports Apache Iceberg tables through a StorageHandler. Named integrations include Spark, Presto, and Impala, with Apache Ranger for authorization and Apache Atlas for lineage and governance. Security options described by the project include Kerberos, fine-grained access control, and audit logging; HiveServer2 also lists LDAP, PAM, and custom authentication. The quickstart includes Docker instructions for the server and Metastore. Hive is free open-source software. The installation manual lists Java 8, Maven 3.6.3, Protobuf 2.5, Hadoop 3.3.6, and Tez among current prerequisites; Hive 4.2.x instead requires JDK 21 minimum and works with Hadoop 3.4.1 and Tez 0.10.5.
Exasol
Exasol is a database for analytics and high-concurrency AI workloads, available in cloud, on-premises, hybrid, and fully managed SaaS deployments. The company says teams can analyze billions of rows in seconds and that automatic self-indexing helps tune performance. SaaS includes five databases, multi-cluster support, basic UDF support, advanced in-database analytics, and data virtualization. Teams can scale vertically or add clusters with dedicated compute for work such as data ingest or machine learning. The 30-day SaaS trial includes $200 of usage and requires no credit card. Pay-as-you-go compute is billed hourly; XS is $3.30 a month and S is $6.60 a month, while storage is listed separately at $25 a month. Free options include Exasol Personal, licensed for a single user and up to two connected data sources, and Community Edition, limited to 200GB of data. Exasol lists integrations including Airbyte, Alation, Amazon QuickSight, Apache Airflow, and Apache Superset. Its documentation covers multiple authentication methods and TLS encryption for database connections; encryption at rest must be configured on the supplied file systems and devices.