DBMS > CouchDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. PouchDB vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. PouchDB vs. SQLite

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

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.

Automatically scaling NoSQL Database as a Service (DBaaS) on the Google Cloud Platform

JavaScript DBMS with an API inspired by CouchDB

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

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

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	4.36
Rank	#72	Overall
	#12	Document stores

Score	2.34
Rank	#112	Overall
	#21	Document stores

Score	111.41
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

couchdb.apache.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/datastore

pouchdb.com

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

apple.github.io/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/datastore/docs

pouchdb.com/guides

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

FoundationDB

Google

Apache Software Foundation

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2005

2013

2008

2012

2000

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

7.1.1, June 2019

3.46.0 (23 May 2024), May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Public Domain

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

C++

JavaScript

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

yes, details here

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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

yes

via views

yes

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

SQL-like query language (GQL)

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

HTTP REST

only for PouchDB Server
JavaScript API

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

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
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

JavaScript

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

in SQL-layer only

using Google App Engine

View functions in JavaScript

Triggers

yes

Callbacks using the Google Apps Engine

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Sharding

with a proxy-based framework, named couchdb-lounge

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Multi-source replication using Paxos

Multi-source replication

also with CouchDB databases
Source-replica replication

also with CouchDB databases

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on type of query and configuration

Strong Consistency is default for entity lookups and queries within an Entity Group (but can instead be made eventually consistent). Other queries are always eventual consistent.

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

via ReferenceProperties or Ancestor paths

yes

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

Serializable Isolation within Transactions, Read Committed outside of Transactions

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

via file-system locks

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, WebSQL or LevelDB as backend

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

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

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