DBMS > Alibaba Cloud PolarDB vs. ClickHouse vs. Couchbase vs. CouchDB vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

System Properties Comparison Alibaba Cloud PolarDB vs. ClickHouse vs. Couchbase vs. CouchDB vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A cloud-native relational database compatible with MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle. Designed for business critical applications.

A high-performance, column-oriented SQL DBMS for online analytical processing (OLAP) that uses all available system resources to their full potential to process each analytical query as fast as possible. It is available as both an open-source software and a cloud offering.

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

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

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

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

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

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

Score	0.59
Rank	#241	Overall
	#110	Relational DBMS

Score	16.34
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	4.25
Rank	#79	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Website

www.alibabacloud.com/product/polardb

clickhouse.com

www.couchbase.com

couchdb.apache.org

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

Technical documentation

www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/polardb/product-overview

clickhouse.com/docs

docs.couchbase.com

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

Developer

Alibaba

Clickhouse Inc.

Couchbase, Inc.

Apache Software Foundation

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

SAP

formerly Sybase

Initial release

2016

2011

2005

1992

Current release

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

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

3.3.3, December 2023

17, July 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

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

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

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.

DoubleCloud: Fully managed ClickHouse alongside best-in-class managed open-source services to build analytics at scale.
ClickHouse Cloud: Get the performance you love from open source ClickHouse in a serverless offering that takes care of the details so you can spend more time getting insight out of the fastest database on earth.
Aiven for Clickhouse: Managed cloud data warehousing with high-speed analytics.

Implementation language

C++

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Erlang

Server operating systems

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

Linux
OS X
Windows

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

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

yes

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

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

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

gRPC
HTTP REST
JDBC
MySQL wire protocol
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Proprietary protocol

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

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Java
Python

3rd party library
C++
Elixir

3rd party library
Go

3rd party library
Java

3rd party library
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party library
Kotlin

3rd party library
Nim

3rd party library
Perl

3rd party library
PHP

3rd party library
Python

3rd party library
R

3rd party library
Ruby

3rd party library
Rust
Scala

3rd party library

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

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

View functions in JavaScript

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

key based and custom

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Asynchronous and synchronous physical replication; geographically distributed replicas; support for object storages.

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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

Access rights for users and roles. Column and row based policies. Quotas and resource limits. Pluggable authentication with LDAP and Kerberos. Password based, X.509 certificate, and SSH key authentication.

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

Access rights for users can be defined per database

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

PolarDB, previously ApsaraDB for PolarDB, is a cloud-native relational database designed...
» more

Competitive advantages

Webinar: Top Scientists Live: Tech Secrets to Double 11's Success Revealed. White...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Creating a Robust Cloud-Based Database for Fintech, E-Commerce and Gaming. Learn...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Specification and pricing. You can use either of the following billing methods to...
» 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.