DBMS > AlaSQL vs. HyperSQL vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. SwayDB vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. HyperSQL vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. SwayDB vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Multithreaded, transactional RDBMS written in Java

also known as HSQLDB

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

An embeddable, non-blocking, type-safe key-value store for single or multiple disks and in-memory storage

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

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Key-value store

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

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	3.23
Rank	#93	Overall
	#48	Relational DBMS

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	0.04
Rank	#387	Overall
	#61	Key-value stores

Score	1.52
Rank	#153	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

alasql.org

hsqldb.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

swaydb.simer.au

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

hsqldb.org/web/hsqlDocsFrame.html

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Microsoft

Simer Plaha

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2014

2001

2014

2018

2019

Current release

2.7.2, June 2023

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

based on BSD license

commercial

Open Source

GNU Affero GPL V3.0

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

JavaScript

Java

Scala

Server operating systems

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

All OS with a Java VM

Embedded (into Java applications) and Client-Server operating modes

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

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

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

SQL-like query language

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

HTTP API

JDBC via HTTP
JDBC
ODBC

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

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC
Java

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

Java
Kotlin
Scala

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java, SQL

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual 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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

Atomic execution of operations

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

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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,...
» more

Competitive advantages

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
» more

Typical application scenarios

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
» more

Key customers

All companies that have data.
» more

Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.