DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Amazon CloudSearch vs. Couchbase vs. CrateDB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Amazon CloudSearch vs. Couchbase vs. CrateDB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

A hosted search engine service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

Distributed Database based on Lucene

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Search engine

Document store

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	0.42
Rank	#264	Overall
	#42	Document stores
	#122	Relational DBMS

Score	1.86
Rank	#133	Overall
	#12	Search engines

Score	16.74
Rank	#33	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	0.69
Rank	#226	Overall
	#37	Document stores
	#5	Spatial DBMS
	#16	Search engines
	#19	Time Series DBMS
	#11	Vector DBMS

Score	72.95
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch

www.couchbase.com

cratedb.com

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch

docs.couchbase.com

cratedb.com/docs

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Amazon

Couchbase, Inc.

Crate

Microsoft

Initial release

2014

2012

2011

2013

2010

Current release

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

5.8.1, August 2024

V12

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

Open Source

commercial

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

JavaScript

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Java

C++

Server operating systems

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

All Operating Systems, including Kubernetes with CrateDB Kubernetes Operator support

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free)

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

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 search fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to SQL99, but no user access control, stored procedures and host language bindings.

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

yes, but no triggers and constraints, and PostgreSQL compatibility

yes

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

HTTP API

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Prometheus Remote Read/Write
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.NET
Erlang
Go

community maintained client
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

community maintained client
Perl

community maintained client
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

community maintained client
Scala

community maintained client

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

user defined functions (Javascript)

Transact SQL

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

yes

automatic partitioning across Amazon Search Instance as required

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

managed transparently by AWS

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Configurable replication on table/partition-level

yes, with always 3 replicas available

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Eventual Consistency
Read-after-write consistency on record level

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

only for local storage and DOM-storage

ACID

unique row identifiers can be used for implementing an optimistic concurrency control strategy

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

User concepts

Access control

authentication via encrypted signatures

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

rights management via user accounts

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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