DBMS > CouchDB vs. FileMaker vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. PostGIS vs. SwayDB

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. FileMaker vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. PostGIS vs. SwayDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

FileMaker is a cross-platform RDBMS that includes a GUI frontend.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

An embeddable, non-blocking, type-safe key-value store for single or multiple disks and in-memory storage

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Spatial DBMS

Key-value store

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	8.30
Rank	#47	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	47.91
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

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

Score	21.72
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Score	0.04
Rank	#387	Overall
	#61	Key-value stores

Website

couchdb.apache.org

www.claris.com/filemaker

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

postgis.net

swaydb.simer.au

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

postgis.net/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Microsoft

Simer Plaha

Initial release

2005

1983

2014

2005

2018

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

19.4.1, November 2021

3.4.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPL v2.0

Open Source

GNU Affero GPL V3.0

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.

Implementation language

Erlang

Scala

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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

A http query request can return the data in XML format

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

via plugins

SQL-like query language

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

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

Supported programming languages

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

PHP

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

Java
Kotlin
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

yes

JavaScript

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

based on PostgreSQL

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

based on PostgreSQL

none

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

Eventual Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Atomic execution of operations

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.

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per database

simple rights management via user accounts and connection to external directory services

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

yes

based on PostgreSQL

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.