DBMS > Citus vs. Couchbase vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Citus vs. Couchbase vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. TimescaleDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

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

Widely used in-process key-value store

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Key-value store

supports sorted and unsorted key sets
Native XML DBMS

in the Oracle Berkeley DB XML version

Time Series DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.15
Rank	#117	Overall
	#56	Relational DBMS

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	2.01
Rank	#126	Overall
	#21	Key-value stores
	#3	Native XML DBMS

Score	4.46
Rank	#71	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Website

www.citusdata.com

www.couchbase.com

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/berkeleydb.html

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

docs.citusdata.com

docs.couchbase.com

docs.oracle.com/cd/E17076_05/html/index.html

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Oracle

originally developed by Sleepycat, which was acquired by Oracle

Timescale

Initial release

2010

2011

1994

2017

Current release

8.1, December 2018

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

18.1.40, May 2020

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

Open Source

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

Open Source

commercial license available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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, C++, Go and Erlang

C, Java, C++ (depending on the Berkeley DB edition)

Server operating systems

Linux

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
Android
FreeBSD
iOS
Linux
OS X
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

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

specific XML type available, but no XML query functionality

yes

only with the Berkeley DB XML edition

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

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

yes

SQL interfaced based on SQLite is available

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

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

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

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

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net

Figaro is a .Net framework assembly that extends Berkeley DB XML into an embeddable database engine for .NET
others

Third-party libraries to manipulate Berkeley DB files are available for many languages
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party binding
Perl
Python
Tcl

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

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

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

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

via the TAP protocol

yes

only for the SQL API

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Automatic Sharding

none

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

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

selectable on a per-operation basis

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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