DBMS > 4D vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Solr vs. TimesTen vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Solr vs. TimesTen vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

A widely used distributed, scalable search engine based on Apache Lucene

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Search engine

Relational DBMS

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	42.91
Rank	#24	Overall
	#3	Search engines

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

solr.apache.org

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

solr.apache.org/resources.html

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

4D, Inc

Microsoft

Apache Software Foundation

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

1984

2014

2006

1998

2019

Current release

v20, April 2023

9.6.0, April 2024

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

Java

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

runs as a servlet in servlet container (e.g. Tomcat, Jetty is included)

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Dynamic Fields enables on-the-fly addition of new fields

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

yes

supports customizable data types and automatic typing

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

SQL-like query language

Solr Parallel SQL Interface

yes

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

.Net
Erlang
Java
JavaScript
any language that supports sockets and either XML or JSON
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

Java plugins

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

User configurable commands triggered on index changes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

spark-solr: github.com/lucidworks/spark-solr and streaming expressions to reduce

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

optimistic locking

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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