DBMS > Apache Drill vs. ArangoDB vs. Couchbase vs. FoundationDB vs. Postgres-XL

System Properties Comparison Apache Drill vs. ArangoDB vs. Couchbase vs. FoundationDB vs. Postgres-XL

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Schema-free SQL Query Engine for Hadoop, NoSQL and Cloud Storage

Native multi-model DBMS for graph, document, key/value and search. All in one engine and accessible with one query language.

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

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

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Search engine

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

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

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.02
Rank	#124	Overall
	#22	Document stores
	#59	Relational DBMS

Score	3.26
Rank	#88	Overall
	#15	Document stores
	#5	Graph DBMS
	#12	Key-value stores
	#10	Search engines

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	1.06
Rank	#185	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	0.53
Rank	#254	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Website

drill.apache.org

arangodb.com

www.couchbase.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.postgres-xl.org

Technical documentation

drill.apache.org/docs

docs.arangodb.com

docs.couchbase.com

apple.github.io/foundationdb

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

Social network pages

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

ArangoDB Inc.

Couchbase, Inc.

FoundationDB

Initial release

2012

2011

2013

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

Current release

1.20.3, January 2023

3.11.5, November 2023

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

6.2.28, November 2020

10 R1, October 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial license (Enterprise) available

Open Source

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

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

ArangoDB Cloud –The Managed Cloud Service of ArangoDB. Provides fully managed, and monitored cluster deployments of any size, with enterprise-grade security. Get started for free and continue for as little as $0,21/hour.

Implementation language

C++

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

automatically recognizes schema within a collection

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, double, boolean, list, hash

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL SELECT statement is SQL:2003 compliant

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

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

AQL
Foxx Framework
Graph API (Gremlin)
GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Java & SpringData
JSON style queries
VelocyPack/VelocyStream

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

C++

C#
C++
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Rust

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

JavaScript

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

in SQL-layer only

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

since version 2.0

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication with configurable replication factor

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

can be done with stored procedures in JavaScript

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency

configurable per collection or per write
Immediate Consistency
OneShard (highly available, fault-tolerant deployment mode with ACID semantics)

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

MVCC

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

Depending on the underlying data source

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

Depending on the underlying data source

yes

Ephemeral buckets

User concepts

Access control

Depending on the underlying data source

yes

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Graph and Beyond. With more than 11,000 stargazers on GitHub, ArangoDB is the leading...
» more

Competitive advantages

Consolidation: As a native multi-model database, can be used as a full blown document...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Native multi-model in ArangoDB is being used for a broad range of projects across...
» more

Key customers

Cisco, Barclays, Refinitive, Siemens Mentor, Kabbage, Liaison, Douglas, MakeMyTrip,...
» more

Market metrics

ArangoDB is the leading native multi-model database with over 11,000 stargazers on...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Very permissive Apache 2 License for Community Edition & commercial licenses are...
» more

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