DBMS > CouchDB vs. Memcached vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Riak KV

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. Memcached vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Riak KV

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

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.

In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Distributed, fault tolerant key-value store

Primary database model

Document store

Key-value store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Key-value store

with links between data sets and object tags for the creation of secondary indexes

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	19.42
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	4.10
Rank	#82	Overall
	#9	Key-value stores

Website

couchdb.apache.org

www.memcached.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/kv/latest

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Microsoft

OpenSource, formerly Basho Technologies

Initial release

2005

2003

2014

2009

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

1.6.25, March 2024

3.2.0, December 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

BSD license

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2, commercial enterprise edition

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

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON 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.

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

restricted

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Proprietary protocol

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

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

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++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

JavaScript

Erlang

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

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

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

selectable replication factor

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

yes

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

links between data sets can be stored

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

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.

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per database

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

yes, using Riak Security

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.