DBMS > Cachelot.io vs. CouchDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Cachelot.io vs. CouchDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. TimescaleDB

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

In-memory caching system

A native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

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

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Key-value store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	0.04
Rank	#388	Overall
	#62	Key-value stores

Score	8.30
Rank	#47	Overall
	#7	Document stores

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

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	4.46
Rank	#71	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Website

cachelot.io

couchdb.apache.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

apple.github.io/foundationdb

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer

FoundationDB

Microsoft

Timescale

Initial release

2015

2005

2013

2014

2017

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Simplified BSD License

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

yes

JSON types

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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

via views

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

SQL-like query language

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

Memcached protocol

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

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

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

in SQL-layer only

JavaScript

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency

Linearizable consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session 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

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

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.

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per database

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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