DBMS > Alibaba Cloud PolarDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Memgraph

System Properties Comparison Alibaba Cloud PolarDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Memgraph

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

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

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

An open source graph database built for real-time streaming and compatible with Neo4j

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Graph DBMS

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

Score	1.26
Rank	#158	Overall
	#71	Relational DBMS

Score	0.89
Rank	#197	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#29	Key-value stores
	#92	Relational DBMS

Score	2.54
Rank	#98	Overall
	#8	Graph DBMS

Website

www.alibabacloud.com/product/polardb

github.com/apple/foundationdb

memgraph.com

Technical documentation

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

apple.github.io/foundationdb

memgraph.com/docs

Developer

Alibaba

FoundationDB

Memgraph Ltd

Initial release

2013

2017

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

BSL 1.1; commercial license for enterprise edition available

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

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free and schema-optional

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

supported in specific SQL layer only

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language

Supported programming languages

Java
Python

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

.Net
C
C++
Elixir
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

in SQL-layer only

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

dynamic graph partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Multi-source replication using RAFT

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

yes

relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

with snapshot isolation

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

with periodic snapshot and write-ahead logging (WAL) of changes

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

Users, roles and permissions

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More resources

Recent citations in the news

Alibaba Cloud’s PolarDB Breaks TPC-C Benchmark World Record with Innovative ‘Three-Layer Decoupling’ Architecture
26 February 2025, Alizila

Alibaba Cloud’s PolarDB Breaks TPC-C Record
12 March 2025, CDOTrends

Figure 1: Illustration of POLARDB architecture.
3 November 2024, ResearchGate

Alibaba Cloud PolarDB Tops Global Database Performance, Price/tpmC Rankings
25 February 2025, AASTOCKS.com

Alibaba Cloud Named a Leader in Cloud Database Management Systems for the Third Consecutive Year
2 March 2023, Financial IT

provided by Google News

Apple Acquires Durable Database Company FoundationDB
24 March 2015, TechCrunch

FoundationDB Record Layer: A Multi-Tenant Structured Datastore
25 July 2020, Apple Machine Learning Research

FoundationDB team’s new venture, Antithesis, raises $47M to enhance software testing
13 February 2024, SiliconANGLE

IBM Cloudant pulls plan to fund new foundational layer for CouchDB
15 March 2022, theregister.com

FoundationDB, a very interesting NoSQL database owned by Apple, is now an open-source project
19 April 2018, GeekWire

provided by Google News

NASA jettisons Neo4j database for Memgraph citing costs
7 May 2025, theregister.com

Memgraph 3.0 Delivers Streamlined Way to Build Enterprise-Specific GenAI and Agentic AI
10 February 2025, Business Wire

Memgraph 3 Simplifies Graph Based AI Projects
11 February 2025, i-programmer.info

Memgraph is Recognized as a Responsive Company in the Knowledge Graph Market by MarketsandMarkets' 360Quadrants
9 April 2025, MarketsandMarkets

SLM series - Memgraph: The SLM-knowledge graph combo
25 March 2025, Computer Weekly

provided by Google News

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