DBMS > Apache Cassandra vs. CouchDB vs. Sphinx vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Apache Cassandra vs. CouchDB vs. Sphinx vs. Weaviate

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Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

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

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

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

Score	98.94
Rank	#11	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	7.46
Rank	#51	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	5.97
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	1.48
Rank	#149	Overall
	#8	Vector DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

couchdb.apache.org

sphinxsearch.com

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

sphinxsearch.com/docs

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Apache Software Foundation

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

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2008

2005

2001

2019

Current release

5.0-rc1, July 2024

3.3.3, December 2023

3.5.1, February 2023

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

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.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

Java

Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

via views

yes

full-text index on all search fields

yes

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

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Proprietary protocol

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

atomic operations within a single document possible

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users can be defined per database

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

Apache Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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