DBMS > CouchDB vs. IBM Cloudant vs. MaxDB vs. MySQL vs. PostGIS

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. IBM Cloudant vs. MaxDB vs. MySQL vs. PostGIS

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.

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

A robust and reliable RDBMS optimized to run all major SAP solutions

Widely used open source RDBMS

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Spatial DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	2.68
Rank	#106	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	2.32
Rank	#112	Overall
	#55	Relational DBMS

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	22.69
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Website

couchdb.apache.org

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

maxdb.sap.com

www.mysql.com

postgis.net

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

maxdb.sap.com/documentation

dev.mysql.com/doc

postgis.net/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

SAP, acquired from Software AG (Adabas-D) in 1997

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Initial release

2005

2010

1984

1995

2005

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

7.9.10.12, February 2024

8.3.0, January 2024

3.4.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Limited community edition free

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

GPL v2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

Erlang

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

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

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
WebDAV

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

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

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

.Net
C#
Java
Perl
PHP
Python

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

yes

proprietary syntax

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Sharding

none

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

based on PostgreSQL

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

atomic operations within a document possible

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Optimistic locking

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

yes

based on PostgreSQL

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