DBMS > Apache Impala vs. BaseX vs. Couchbase vs. KairosDB vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. BaseX vs. Couchbase vs. KairosDB vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Light-weight Native XML DBMS with support for XQuery 3.0 and interactive GUI.

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

Distributed Time Series DBMS based on Cassandra or H2

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store

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

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

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#142	Overall
	#4	Native XML DBMS

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	0.62
Rank	#239	Overall
	#20	Time Series DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

basex.org

www.couchbase.com

github.com/kairosdb/kairosdb

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

docs.basex.org

docs.couchbase.com

kairosdb.github.io

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

BaseX GmbH

Couchbase, Inc.

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2013

2007

2011

2013

2019

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

10.7, August 2023

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

1.2.2, November 2018

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

BSD license

Open Source

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

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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++

Java

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Java

Server operating systems

Linux

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

XQuery supports types

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

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

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

Java API
RESTful HTTP API
RESTXQ
WebDAV
XML:DB
XQJ

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

Graphite protocol
HTTP REST
Telnet API

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Actionscript
C
C#
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lisp
Perl
PHP
Python
Qt
Rebol
Ruby
Scala
Visual Basic

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

yes

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

Triggers

yes

via events

yes

via the TAP protocol

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

based on Cassandra

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

none

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

selectable replication factor

based on Cassandra

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Eventual Consistency

based on Cassandra
Immediate Consistency

based on Cassandra

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

multiple readers, single writer

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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

Access rights for users, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

Users with fine-grained authorization concept on 4 levels

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

simple password-based access control

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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