# Apache Phoenix Reviews **Vendor:** The Apache Software Foundation **Category:** [Relational Databases](https://www.g2.com/categories/relational-databases) **Average Rating:** 3.7/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 27 ## About Apache Phoenix Apache Phoenix is an open source, massively parallel, relational database engine supporting OLTP for Hadoop using Apache HBase as its backing store. ## Apache Phoenix Reviews ### 1. Not very developer friendly **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aritra N. | Senior Software Development Engineer in Test, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 25, 2021 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** SQL like syntax is the only thing positive **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Apache Phoenix is still very primitive and does not offer easy SQL syntaxes. The errors/ exceptions are hard to understand, and development is slow. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Do not expect much support from the community. Have created a ticket for over one and a half years and still it is unattended. Would have been great for the ticket to be solved as it would have solved a very common problem in big data loading into HBase tables via Apache Phoenix's Hadoop Map-Reduce program. Have provided detailed screenshots, steps to reproduce, etc. But when checked a few days ago, the ticket has not been picked up. Hence, I think it will be very painful for anyone to do advanced stuff with Apache Phoenix in the long run. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Was trying to process our OLTP big data store. The only benefits are the SQL-like syntaxes and the that it can talk to HBase easily. The most positive point is that HBase and Apache Phoenix go hand in hand and so it is fairly easy to integrate your HBase tables with Apache Phoenix. The upsert statements are also helpful and there is a handly Hadoop Map Reduce program that you can execute from your Java program to load gigabytes of data to your HBase tables. This Map Reduce feature is the most beneficial aspect I have found off of Apache Phoenix. Note that, you can also use the command line to do the same operation. ### 2. Apache Phoenix is the fastest way to use SQL to access data in HBase **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Clif K. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 09, 2021 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Apache Phoenix provides access to data that's stored in HBase which is a column oriented database. HBase doesn't natively support SQL or really any query language. The HBase shell has a scan command for accessing data but I find it extremely awkward to use. Phoenix "puts the SQL back in NoSQL" so that means if you know SQL you can query data in HBase using a language you know. While there are multiple ways to access data in HBase through SQL including Apache Hive, Impala and Drill, I think Apache Phoenix has a better design than any of the alternatives. Unlike most relational databases that require schema design before you can add data, HBase is essentially schemaless. However all of these tools require a schema, so that means in order to use them you have to fist map the fields in HBase (at least the ones you want to use) to a metadata layer. Hive/Impala, Drill and Phoenix each do this in their own unique way, but I think the way you do this in Phoenix is the most logical. Also in my experience Phoenix provides better throughput than any of the alternatives because it converts SQL queries into HBase scans. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** You do have to create the Phoenix schema manually. Unlike the alternatives Phoenix can only access data stored in HBase, so if you want to combine data from different data sources, such as CSV or JSON files you need to use something else. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Remember one thing: even though Apache Phoenix makes HBase look like a relational database it does not turn it into one. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Providing access to business intelligence tools for data in HBase through JDBC. This makes HBase data appear the same as data in relational databases. Data in HBase can be combined with other data sources. ### 3. See Hadoop for low latency applications. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jannier M. | Applications and Web security, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 06, 2021 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Complete and flexible ACID transaction capacity, NoSQL schema reading by taking advantage of speed and fast HBase query. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Everything has to be done manually, an error is difficult to find to correct with the lack of data and information. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Integrate system for data analysis and immediate consultation, activity control and personalized data. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data repository for immediate consultation, administrator and analytics of thousands of data integrated or installed. ### 4. Apache Phoenix : A dual edged sword for Apache HBase **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Yashasvi D. | Software Developer - Advanced, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Through documentation is available which makes it easy to start and setup. One gets to work with the comfortable SQL syntax without being bothered to crawl through HBase help docs for shell syntax. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Tables created from HBase shell have to be mapped separately in Phoenix. Bulk loading data to tables created via Phoenix is not as straight forward as for tables created from HBase shell. Apache Phoenix's capabilities depends heavily on HBase coprocessors making it tightly coupled to HBase Architecture, which is a challenge as Phoenix needs to be revamped with every Major release of Apache HBase, and due to this fact Apache Phoenix is less reliant in Production environment. Switching through Index (Global to Local and vice versa)on a table becomes a pain point. Integration with Apache Spark needs to be improved on. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** HBase is the product is being used as Unique data repository, Apache Phoenix is used to perform Data Steward operation before being consumed by down stream system. ### 5. Apache Phoenix has high performance capabilities if you are working with Hadoop technologies **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Arunesh T. | Lead Assistant Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 02, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** When working with high volume of data, Apache phoenix will provide high performance and helps you in performance tuning and also provide some additional features which will help you get the results faster in very less time for complex query also. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** It is new and open source so you have to explore most of the things by yourself. The more you explore the more you like this. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Yes,you can give a shot as it is open source software and can review this by yourself. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used Apache phoenix for analytics purpose when we are working on huge volume data say as billion of records. This will help you in working with huge volume of data. I will suggest that give it a shot as this is open source and you will see the difference with trade mark products. ### 6. Growing Project, but a long way to go. Used it for a gigantic table (~1TB) to query data for a API **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kartik M. | Lead Software Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 17, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Response time ~ hbase query, SQL support with JDBC standards Phoenix is developing gradually and with hbase 2.0 support it has reached good. It's the option explored when we wanted something cheap which can sit inside our emr cluster. having EMR is good on it. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** installation steps, no window func, not using proper error message instead giving stacktrace (though sometimes more useful) but should be logged, spark support was very late, documentation is not verbose, bad orm library (not widely supported by other ORM)) unfortunately phoenix popularity is dependent on hbase, and hbase is somewhat not in talks very much. I find no cloud provider is giving serverless hbase/phoenix hosting. EMR is managed but emr support team is quite limited with knowledge with in phoenix specially. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Try all SQL queries first that would be required. Eg. window function, ranks are not there. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using Bulk Tools is pain, we use csv dump as of now. CSV dump misses a lot of features (compare with pg copy command) We have just 1 table which has a row combination of 2 cols. The table contains ~1TB of data. Benefits - Very cost effective, using existing resources hbase, hadoop. Good for a direct usecase (but if someone wants a primary db better to try other dbs like cassandra, mongo etc based on use case) Bulk Tools are something very good and I first used it with phoenix , however support for more formats like parquet, orc should be used built in bulk tools because data isn't store in csv/json/tsv on datalake) ### 7. SQL query **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sebastian S. | Software engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 04, 2021 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Integrate Apache HBase and automatic database backup **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** I have no problems with integration and extra API **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Server control system **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Hadoop analysis and API for SQL database ### 8. Apache Phoenix: A very powerful tool to deal with hbase **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 28, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** It helped me a lot in dealing with Hbase data. As i can't directly execute sql query on HBase, it enabled me to execute sql like query to deal with data. Also the support was easily available on internet if i get stuck somewhere. Configuring it with the application and setting it up was also very easy. It made the work with large amount of data very easy without any performance issue. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** At one side it's strong point is that enables query execution and on the other side it's limitation is also with query. As it doesn't support update command in starting i faced a lot of issue. Upsert command is there but still in many scenarios i faced much difficulty to properly execute it. If we can have update command in this it would be a very good point so this can be improved. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** It's a good tool to interact with Hbase. If you are using HBase in your application then i will say for sure you should go with Apache Phoenix. It will make your work a lot easier. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am using it to interact with Hbase and handle large amount of data for our application. It makes the work easier which in absence of phoenix would be very difficult. ### 9. Advance user of Apache Phoenix - Enterprise domain architect review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 01, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** We use hortonworks with hbase as our back end system. we have Apache phoenix on top of it , which is used by our BI team. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Using ETL tools for more transformations, its not that easy as typical MSSQL Servers **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** If you have hbase then Apache phoenix is very good combination. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have huge data - data keeps coming every day ( 10 to 20 GB of data ),is that it provides access to HBase using an interface that most programmers are familiar with, namely JDBC ### 10. I worked apache Phoenix on top of HBase while working on Spark **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Subhankar B. | Senior Technical Consultant, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** We can use SQl operations without knowing hbase query syntax. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** The Phoenix JDBC driver normalizes column names, but the Phoenix-Spark integration does not perform this operation while loading data from Phoenix Table. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** I will recommend Apache Phoenix who would like to integrate apache hbase with spark. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have used apache Phoenix on top of hbase ,for that we didn't require to write hbase query simple sql query was efficient. ### 11. One of the best ways to access your data. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Subhodip B. | Technical Lead, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2021 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Pheonix can actually create a layer of abstraction to hide the complexity. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** The lack of a GUI intruder to visualise and create an architectecture diagram. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Can query a petabyte dataset similar to querying a gigabyte dataset. ### 12. Very good sql based data access for Apache HBase **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 25, 2021 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Well documented and easy to start with SQL knowledge for Hbase **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Always we need to create ddl in Apache phoenix and mapping from Hbase to access if we why the possibility to auto table creation with the hbase connection detail would be great. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** time-series data stored in HBase will be accessed using apache phoenix for data analytics. ### 13. Apache Phoenix **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 08, 2021 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** 1.SQL Language 2.Secondary indexes 3.Hints **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Performance of read queries when data is stored and accessed cross regions **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** I was trying to read data stored in Hbase in an optimal cost effective manner ### 14. Great help in migrating application from SQL to NoSQL seamlessly. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rajat T. | Data Scientist, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 23, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** I found Apache Phoenix very helpful in a Project where we shifted from SQL database to NoSQL database (HBase). So existing application was totally running on SQL queries and we wanted keep same interface for same SQL queries over HBase. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Some of the syntax was not easily available. Had to try configurations to fit into our application. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** The tool is useful and solves the purpose. The only thing is setting the configurations correctly and setting up JDBC connection and less availability of syntax and use-cases on google. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Run SQL queries on top of HBase. We successfully managed to migrate our application using Apache Phoenix. ### 15. Immature SQL Engine **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 29, 2021 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** The only thing likable in Apache Phoenix is its SQL like feature **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Difficult to quickly write query, unnecessary requirement for single and double quotes. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Its useful to query HBase data and hence the SQL constructs are definitely handy for seasoned developers. ### 16. Best fits for web-apps /products **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2021 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Response time for large data tables and flexibility to create external index,SQL interface **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Limited options on metadata, few abnormal index behaviour observed at higher environment **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Go to tool for web-based products **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Hosting web-applications, reporting layer for BI Tools ### 17. Performance benefits by creating views over hbase tables **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Adithya K. | Data Engineering | Data Analytics | MIS Expert, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 17, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Ability to create various views on top of hbase tables and performance improvements over Hive **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Query performance when multiple joins/ deeply nested queries are executed needs to be improved **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Understand your use case and decide on the framework to be used **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating views on HBase tables and building aggregated tables on top of them and get insightful analysis of data. The performance of the queries are high compared to the hive on HBase and is highly scalable ### 18. Querying HBase **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ankit A. | Python Developer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 21, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** It provides an SQL interface to HBase. It is like an SQL layer on top of HBase architecture. It maps HBase data model to the relational world. Somewhat better than HIVE **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Some limitation of features in older versions like Limit keyword. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** NA **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** We had a scenario where we had to read data from Hbase. ### 19. With apache pheonix we were able to ease usage of hbase **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Poojan K. | Data Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 31, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Apache phoenix have helped us to integrate our hbase store with spark engine and also provided solution for region hotspot issues **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Integration with Kerberos and installation **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Able to have sql like layers on top of hbase and also salt bucketing features has provided solution of region hotspot issue ### 20. Ease of use **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Neha A. | Consultant, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 01, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Apache Phonenix makes it very easy to query Hbase which is No sqp database. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Sometimes the errors which we get are not properly stated by Phoenix . Hence it becomes difficult to debug the issue. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are building a data lake and storing data in Hbase for Reproting Layer. We use Phonenix to build dashboard queries which helps us query no SQL database as a SQL interface ### 21. I used Apache Phoenix as a part of my integration **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 17, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** It’s best to use when you compared other products in market **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Initial understanding is little quiet difficult for beginners **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** It’s esy and robust **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** We used to create some tables and data. That we sent different Data to big data . It’s very easy in both use and documentation ### 22. Apache Phoenix is a relational database engine support **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** vishal r. | Quality Assurance Quality Control, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 19, 2019 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Apache Phoenix is an amazing tool for relational database support. and Apache Phoenix is an open source, massively parallel, relational database engine supporting OLTP for Hadoop using Apache HBase.this tool is easy to learn and user-friendly. this tool helps me in the database . **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Phoenix offers lower latency but lower throughput. It has less flexibility. **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Phoenix is an open source SQL skin for HBase.Phoenix is a SQL layer between applications and HBase, it provides ad-hoc queries in real time. Apache Phoenix helps us build Phoenix HBase ORM. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Phoenix compiles queries and other statements into native NoSQL store APIs rather than using MapReduce enabling the building of low latency applications on top of NoSQL stores. ### 23. Best engine for big data **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 14, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** You can directly get the views from HBase tables. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Not lot of examples and sample videos or tutorials available online. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Reading data faster than regular Big data SQL. Fast and less memory consuming with low latency. ### 24. Slow on spark **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 13, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Best part is the ability to perfom sql on hbase **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Cant handle huge volumes of data.Could see issues when loading spark dataframe into phoenix db **Recommendations to others considering Apache Phoenix:** Best to query data **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** When trying to write into hbase from spark using hbase connector it expects the catalog to be pre defiend,since most of our code is a dynamic process,we opted for phoenix.But it takes time for huge volumes of data. ### 25. Friendly for developers and analysts alike. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Market Research | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 31, 2020 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** SQL like abstraction for HBase? Which has a complex query language. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Nothing really. Apache Phoenix was incredibly helpful! **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** Providing an alternative to Apache HBase. ### 26. Apache Phoenix SQL on NoSQL **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Varun S. | Data Engineer, Computer Software, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 15, 2019 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** Apache Phoenix provides a great virtualization layer on Apache Hbase which is primarily a NoSQL database. It provides capabilities of transforming SQL queries into native Hbase API calls. It also supports parallel processing which makes data retrieval super efficient. It has other advantages like supporting secondary indexes and query optimizations along with providing stats on the query. It does a read-only view on Hbase so there's no additional storage needed. **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** Some of the limitations are it's still relatively new and no major online forums available for knowledge sharing. And there are some limitations for apache spark connectors. **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** This enables the business to have SQL like capabilities on Hbase data to make important business decisions. ### 27. Apache Phoenix enables OLTP **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sal R. | College Program Coordinator , Education Management, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 30, 2018 **What do you like best about Apache Phoenix?** I like that it supports mapping to our existing HBase table **What do you dislike about Apache Phoenix?** not much at all, like stated the support it gives is superb **What problems is Apache Phoenix solving and how is that benefiting you?** mostly getting better analytics ## Apache Phoenix Discussions - [What is Phoenix schema?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-phoenix-schema) - [What is Phoenix in Hadoop?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-phoenix-in-hadoop) - [Is Apache Phoenix good?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-apache-phoenix-good) - [What is Apache Phoenix used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-apache-phoenix-used-for) - [View Apache Phoenix pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/apache-phoenix/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-01+06%3A24%3A19+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=455766bd-729d-4c05-bd12-9904da00c110&secure%5Btoken%5D=1fd40966005615b895ae953cdfdc1dafa9c33c2ea83f649757fc55987fedeece&format=llm_user) ## Apache Phoenix Features **Management ** - Data Schema - Query Language - ACID - Complaint - Data Replication **Support ** - Text Search - Data Types - Languages - Operating Systems **Security** - Database Locking - Access Control - Encryption - Authentication **Performance ** - Disaster Recovery - Data Concurrency - Workload Management - Advanced Indexing - Query Optimizer **Database Features** - Storage - Availability - Stability - Scalability - Security - Data Manipulation - Query Language ## Top Apache Phoenix Alternatives - [MySQL](https://www.g2.com/products/mysql/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (1,576 reviews) - [Microsoft SQL Server](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-sql-server/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (2,123 reviews) - [PostgreSQL](https://www.g2.com/products/postgresql/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (646 reviews)