DBMS > CouchDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. OrientDB vs. RDF4J vs. SAP HANA

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. OrientDB vs. RDF4J vs. SAP HANA

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.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Multi-model DBMS (Document, Graph, Key/Value)

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

In-memory, column based data store. Available as appliance or cloud service

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store

RDF store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with SAP Hana, Enterprise Edition
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	3.19
Rank	#93	Overall
	#16	Document stores
	#7	Graph DBMS
	#14	Key-value stores

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	44.69
Rank	#22	Overall
	#16	Relational DBMS

Website

couchdb.apache.org

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

orientdb.org

rdf4j.org

www.sap.com/products/hana.html

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

www.orientdb.com/docs/last/index.html

rdf4j.org/documentation

help.sap.com/hana

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

Microsoft

OrientDB LTD; CallidusCloud; SAP

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

SAP

Initial release

2005

1989

2010

2004

2010

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

3.2.29, March 2024

2.0 SPS07 (April 4, 2023), April 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

also available as a cloud based service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

Erlang

C++

Java

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
Windows

All OS with a Java JDK (>= JDK 6)

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Appliance or cloud-service

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Schema can be enforced for whole record ("schema-full") or for some fields only ("schema-hybrid")

yes

RDF Schemas

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

SQL-like query language, no joins

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Tinkerpop technology stack with Blueprints, Gremlin, Pipes
Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

.Net
C
C#
C++
Clojure
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Java, Javascript

yes

SQLScript, R

Triggers

yes

Hooks

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Sharding

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

could be achieved with distributed queries

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationship in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

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

Access rights for users and roles; record level security configurable

yes

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.