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

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

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

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

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Time Series 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

Relational 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	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

Score	2.70
Rank	#105	Overall
	#8	Time Series DBMS

Website

drill.apache.org

www.couchbase.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.postgres-xl.org

questdb.io

Technical documentation

drill.apache.org/docs

docs.couchbase.com

apple.github.io/foundationdb

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

questdb.io/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Couchbase, Inc.

FoundationDB

QuestDB Technology Inc

Initial release

2012

2011

2013

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2014

Current release

1.20.3, January 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

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

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C++

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

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

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

SQL with time-series extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

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

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Supported programming languages

C++

.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

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

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

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

MVCC

ACID for single-table writes

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

yes

through memory mapped files

User concepts

Access control

Depending on the underlying data source

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

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

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