DBMS > Alibaba Cloud PolarDB vs. CrateDB vs. Elasticsearch vs. Firebird vs. MongoDB

System Properties Comparison Alibaba Cloud PolarDB vs. CrateDB vs. Elasticsearch vs. Firebird vs. MongoDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Distributed Database based on Lucene

A distributed, RESTful modern search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene

Elasticsearch lets you perform and combine many types of searches such as structured, unstructured, geo, and metric

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

One of the most popular document stores available both as a fully managed cloud service and for deployment on self-managed infrastructure

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Search engine

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

Spatial DBMS
Search engine

integrated Lucene index, currently in MongoDB Atlas only.
Time Series DBMS

Time Series Collections introduced in Release 5.0
Vector DBMS

currently available in the MongoDB Atlas cloud service only

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

Score	0.59
Rank	#241	Overall
	#110	Relational DBMS

Score	0.73
Rank	#224	Overall
	#37	Document stores
	#5	Spatial DBMS
	#16	Search engines
	#19	Time Series DBMS
	#8	Vector DBMS

Score	135.35
Rank	#7	Overall
	#1	Search engines

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	421.65
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Website

www.alibabacloud.com/product/polardb

cratedb.com

www.elastic.co/elasticsearch

www.firebirdsql.org

www.mongodb.com

Technical documentation

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

cratedb.com/docs

www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index.html

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

Developer

Alibaba

Crate

Elastic

Firebird Foundation

MongoDB, Inc

Initial release

2013

2010

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2009

Current release

8.6, January 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

6.0.7, June 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Elastic License

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

MongoDB Inc.'s Server Side Public License v1. Prior versions were published under GNU AGPL v3.0. Commercial licenses are also available.

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

CrateDB Cloud: a distributed SQL database that spreads data and processing across an elastic cluster of shared nothing nodes. CrateDB Cloud enables data insights at scale on Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

MongoDB Atlas: Global multi-cloud database with unmatched data distribution and mobility across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, built-in automation for resource and workload optimization, and so much more.
MongoDB Flex @ STACKIT offers managed MongoDB Instances with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

Java

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

All Operating Systems, including Kubernetes with CrateDB Kubernetes Operator support

All OS with a Java VM

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free)

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

yes

schema-free

Although schema-free, documents of the same collection often follow the same structure. Optionally impose all or part of a schema by defining a JSON schema.

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, integer, double, decimal, boolean, date, object_id, geospatial

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 search fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

yes, but no triggers and constraints, and PostgreSQL compatibility

SQL-like query language

yes

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Prometheus Remote Read/Write
RESTful HTTP API

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

Supported programming languages

Java
Python

.NET
Erlang
Go

community maintained client
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

community maintained client
Perl

community maintained client
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

community maintained client
Scala

community maintained client

.Net
Groovy
Community Contributed Clients
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Actionscript

unofficial driver
C
C#
C++
Clojure

unofficial driver
ColdFusion

unofficial driver
D

unofficial driver
Dart

unofficial driver
Delphi

unofficial driver
Erlang
Go
Groovy

unofficial driver
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Lisp

unofficial driver
Lua

unofficial driver
MatLab

unofficial driver
Perl
PHP
PowerShell

unofficial driver
Prolog

unofficial driver
Python
R

unofficial driver
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Smalltalk

unofficial driver
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions (Javascript)

yes

PSQL

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

none

Sharding

Partitioned by hashed, ranged, or zoned sharding keys. Live resharding allows users to change their shard keys as an online operation with zero downtime.

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Configurable replication on table/partition-level

yes

Source-replica replication

Multi-Source deployments with MongoDB Atlas Global Clusters
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

ES-Hadoop Connector

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Read-after-write consistency on record level

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

unique row identifiers can be used for implementing an optimistic concurrency control strategy

ACID

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Memcached and Redis integration

yes

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

rights management via user accounts

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Access rights for users and roles

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

PolarDB, previously ApsaraDB for PolarDB, is a cloud-native relational database designed...
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The enterprise database for time series, documents, and vectors. Distributed - Native...
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MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
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Competitive advantages

Webinar: Top Scientists Live: Tech Secrets to Double 11's Success Revealed. White...
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Response time in milliseconds: e ven for complex ad-hoc queries. Massive scaling...
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Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Typical application scenarios

Creating a Robust Cloud-Based Database for Fintech, E-Commerce and Gaming. Learn...
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IoT: accelerate your IIoT projects with CrateDB, delivering real-time analytics...
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AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
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Key customers

Across all continents, CrateDB is used by companies of all sizes to meet the most...
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ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
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Market metrics

The CrateDB open source project was started in 2013 Honorable Mention in 2021 Gartner®...
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Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
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Licensing and pricing models

Specification and pricing. You can use either of the following billing methods to...
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See CrateDB pricing >
» more

MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.