DBMS > AlaSQL vs. CouchDB vs. Datomic vs. IBM Cloudant vs. MySQL

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. CouchDB vs. Datomic vs. IBM Cloudant vs. MySQL

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

A native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

Datomic builds on immutable values, supports point-in-time queries and uses 3rd party systems for durability

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

Widely used open source RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	0.51
Rank	#256	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#118	Relational DBMS

Score	8.30
Rank	#47	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	1.66
Rank	#144	Overall
	#66	Relational DBMS

Score	2.75
Rank	#104	Overall
	#19	Document stores

Score	1061.34
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

couchdb.apache.org

www.datomic.com

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

www.mysql.com

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

docs.datomic.com

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

dev.mysql.com/doc

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer

Cognitect

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Initial release

2014

2005

2012

2010

1995

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

1.0.7075, December 2023

8.4.0, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Database as a Service

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Implementation language

JavaScript

Erlang

Java, Clojure

Erlang

C and C++

Server operating systems

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

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

Clojure
Java

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

yes

Transaction Functions

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

By using transaction functions

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Sharding

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Multi-source replication
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

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

yes

only for local storage and DOM-storage

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

atomic operations within a document possible

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Optimistic locking

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

using external storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Couchbase and others)

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

recommended only for testing and development

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per database

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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