DBMS > AlaSQL vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. NSDb vs. Vertica

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. NSDb vs. Vertica

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Scalable, High-performance Time Series DBMS designed for Real-time Analytics on top of Kubernetes

Cloud or off-cloud analytical database and query engine for structured and semi-structured streaming and batch data. Machine learning platform with built-in algorithms, data preparation capabilities, and model evaluation and management via SQL or Python.

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Column oriented

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS
Time Series 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	2.68
Rank	#106	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#41	Time Series DBMS

Score	10.68
Rank	#43	Overall
	#27	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

nsdb.io

www.vertica.com

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

nsdb.io/Architecture

vertica.com/documentation

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

Microsoft

OpenText

previously Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard

Initial release

2014

2010

1989

2017

2005

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

12.0.3, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

Limited community edition free

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

on-premises, all major clouds - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and containers

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

JavaScript

Erlang

C++

Java, Scala

C++

Server operating systems

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

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Yes, but also semi-structure/unstructured data storage, and complex hierarchical data (like Parquet) stored and/or queried.

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes: int, bigint, decimal, string

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 fields are automatically indexed

No Indexes Required. Different internal optimization strategy, but same functionality included.

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

SQL-like query language

Full 1999 standard plus machine learning, time series and geospatial. Over 650 functions.

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

gRPC
HTTP REST
WebSocket

ADO.NET
JDBC
Kafka Connector
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spark Connector
vSQL

character-based, interactive, front-end utility

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

Java
Scala

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

yes, PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, with minor differences

Triggers

yes

yes, called Custom Alerts

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Sharding

horizontal partitioning, hierarchical partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication

One, or more copies of data replicated across nodes, or object-store used for repository.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Bi-directional Spark integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

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

atomic operations within a document possible

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

Using Apache Lucene

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard; supports Kerberos, LDAP, Ident and hash

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Deploy-anywhere database for large-scale analytical deployments. Deploy off-cloud,...
» more

Competitive advantages

Fast, scalable, and capable of high concurrency. Separation of compute/storage leverages...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Communication and network analytics, Embedded analytics, Fraud monitoring and Risk...
» more

Key customers

Abiba Systems, Adform, adMarketplace, AmeriPride, Anritsu, AOL, Avito, Auckland Transport,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Cost-based models and subscription-based models are both available. One license is...
» 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.