Frequently Asked Questions

RisingWave replaces Flink's Java-based programming with standard SQL, reducing development time from weeks to hours. It includes built-in state storage (no external RocksDB), instant failure recovery, and decoupled compute-storage for independent scaling. Both support exactly-once semantics. See the detailed comparison.

Kafka is a message broker for data transport. RisingWave is a streaming database that processes and serves data. They are complementary: RisingWave ingests from Kafka, performs complex transformations (joins, aggregations, windowing) via SQL, and serves results — replacing the need for Kafka Streams, ksqlDB, and separate serving databases. Learn how they work together.

RisingWave is a streaming database that processes data before storing — computation is event-driven with incremental updates. OLAP databases like ClickHouse and Druid store data before processing — computation is user-triggered with full scans. RisingWave excels at result freshness; OLAP databases excel at interactive analytical queries.

Both offer SQL over streams, but RisingWave is a standalone database with built-in storage and PostgreSQL compatibility, while ksqlDB is tightly coupled to the Kafka ecosystem. RisingWave supports multi-way joins, complex windowing, and serves queries at lower latency with higher concurrency. See the detailed comparison.