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Apache Drill

Schema-free SQL query engine for Hadoop, NoSQL and cloud storage

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Apache Drill is a schema-free SQL query engine for Hadoop, NoSQL databases and cloud object storage. It lets users query raw data in place without loading it into a separate system, defining schemas in advance, or performing transformations. Queries can reference paths to Hadoop directories, MongoDB collections or S3 buckets, and a single query can join data from multiple datastores.

Drill supports standard SQL and a JSON data model for complex and nested data, with SQL extensions for querying structures that evolve over time. It includes a columnar execution engine, data-driven compilation and recompilation at execution time, specialized memory management, locality-aware execution, and a cost-based optimizer that can push processing into the datastore. It connects to BI tools such as Tableau, Qlik, MicroStrategy, Spotfire, SAS and Excel through JDBC and ODBC drivers, and exposes a REST API for custom applications. Virtual datasets map complex non-relational data into BI-friendly structures.

Drill runs on Mac, Windows and Linux, from an embedded mode on a laptop to clusters of commodity servers. It is distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

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