DBMS > AlaSQL vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. PostGIS vs. TigerGraph

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. PostGIS vs. TigerGraph

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

A complete, distributed, parallel graph computing platform supporting web-scale data analytics in real-time

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Spatial DBMS

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Relational 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	2.75
Rank	#104	Overall
	#19	Document stores

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

Score	21.72
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Score	1.80
Rank	#138	Overall
	#13	Graph DBMS

Website

alasql.org

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

postgis.net

www.tigergraph.com

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

postgis.net/documentation

docs.tigergraph.com

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

Microsoft

Initial release

2014

2010

2014

2005

2017

Current release

3.4.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

Open Source

GPL v2.0

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

JavaScript

Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

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

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON 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

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like query language

yes

SQL-like query language (GSQL)

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

GSQL (TigerGraph Query Language)
Kafka
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

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

C++
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

JavaScript

user defined functions

yes

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

based on PostgreSQL

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

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 document possible

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Optimistic locking

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

Access rights for users can be defined per database

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Role-based access control

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