DBMS > ArangoDB vs. Couchbase vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. RDF4J vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison ArangoDB vs. Couchbase vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. RDF4J vs. Snowflake

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Search engine

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
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	3.32
Rank	#90	Overall
	#15	Document stores
	#5	Graph DBMS
	#12	Key-value stores
	#10	Search engines

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

arangodb.com

www.couchbase.com

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

rdf4j.org

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

docs.arangodb.com

docs.couchbase.com

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

rdf4j.org/documentation

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Social network pages

Developer

ArangoDB Inc.

Couchbase, Inc.

Microsoft

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2012

2011

2010

2004

2014

Current release

3.11.5, November 2023

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

V12

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial license (Enterprise) available

Open Source

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

commercial

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

commercial

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.

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++

Java

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

automatically recognizes schema within a collection

schema-free

yes

RDF Schemas

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, double, boolean, list, hash

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

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

yes

APIs and other access methods

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
ODBC

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

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#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Java
PHP
Python

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

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

Transact SQL

yes

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

since version 2.0

Automatic Sharding

none

yes

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, with always 3 replicas available

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be done with stored procedures in JavaScript

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

User concepts

Access control

yes

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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...
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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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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.