Question: My firm is looking for an out-of-the-box database system to store and query high-frequency tick data. What are the best options? It seems that kdb+ is the market leader in this field.

Answer: 
An alternative is the [TeaFiles file format](https://teafiles.codeplex.com/). It's simple and boasts a high performance but I believe you'll have to reinvent some wheels.
velocity analytics might be a choice.