DBMS > Citus vs. CouchDB vs. MariaDB vs. PostGIS vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Citus vs. CouchDB vs. MariaDB vs. PostGIS vs. Sphinx

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Scalable hybrid operational and analytics RDBMS for big data use cases based on PostgreSQL

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

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.21
Rank	#118	Overall
	#56	Relational DBMS

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	22.69
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

www.citusdata.com

couchdb.apache.org

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

postgis.net

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

docs.citusdata.com

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

postgis.net/documentation

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2010

2005

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2005

2001

Current release

8.1, December 2018

3.3.3, December 2023

11.3.2, February 2024

3.4.2, February 2024

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

Open Source

GPL v2.0

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

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.

STACKIT MariaDB offers MariaDB in a fully managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

Erlang

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

Linux

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

specific XML type available, but no XML query functionality

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

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

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

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

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

View functions in JavaScript

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Sharding

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

based on PostgreSQL

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

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

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users can be defined per database

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

based on PostgreSQL

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
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Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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