DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Citus vs. Couchbase vs. HarperDB vs. Transbase

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Citus vs. Couchbase vs. HarperDB vs. Transbase

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Scalable hybrid operational and analytics RDBMS for big data use cases based on PostgreSQL

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

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

A resource-optimized, high-performance, universally applicable RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

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

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

Score	0.46
Rank	#260	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#121	Relational DBMS

Score	2.21
Rank	#118	Overall
	#56	Relational DBMS

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	0.55
Rank	#248	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	0.11
Rank	#341	Overall
	#150	Relational DBMS

Website

www.transaction.de/en/products/transbase.html

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.citusdata.com

docs.couchbase.com

docs.harperdb.io/docs

www.transaction.de/en/products/transbase/features.html

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Couchbase, Inc.

HarperDB

Transaction Software GmbH

Initial release

2014

2010

2011

2017

1987

Current release

8.1, December 2018

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

3.1, August 2021

Transbase 8.3, 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

Open Source

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

commercial

free community edition available

commercial

free development license

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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

Node.js

C and C++

Server operating systems

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

Linux

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

dynamic schema

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

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

specific XML type available, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

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

SQL-like data manipulation statements

yes

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

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

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Objective-C
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

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

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

yes

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Automatic Sharding

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

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

Atomic execution of specific operations

yes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

yes, using LMDB

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

Access rights for users and roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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