DBMS > CouchDB vs. MongoDB vs. mSQL vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. MongoDB vs. mSQL vs. RDF4J

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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.

One of the most popular document stores available both as a fully managed cloud service and for deployment on self-managed infrastructure

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

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

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

RDF store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Spatial DBMS
Search engine

integrated Lucene index, currently in MongoDB Atlas only.
Time Series DBMS

Time Series Collections introduced in Release 5.0
Vector DBMS

currently available in the MongoDB Atlas cloud service only

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

Score	10.26
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	423.96
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	1.67
Rank	#151	Overall
	#70	Relational DBMS

Score	0.71
Rank	#231	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Website

couchdb.apache.org

www.mongodb.com

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

rdf4j.org

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

rdf4j.org/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

MongoDB, Inc

Hughes Technologies

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

Initial release

2005

2009

1994

2004

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

6.0.7, June 2023

4.4, October 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

MongoDB Inc.'s Server Side Public License v1. Prior versions were published under GNU AGPL v3.0. Commercial licenses are also available.

commercial

free licenses can be provided

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

MongoDB Atlas: Global multi-cloud database with unmatched data distribution and mobility across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, built-in automation for resource and workload optimization, and so much more.

Implementation language

Erlang

C++

Java

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

Although schema-free, documents of the same collection often follow the same structure. Optionally impose all or part of a schema by defining a JSON schema.

yes

RDF Schemas

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, integer, double, decimal, boolean, date, object_id, geospatial

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

JDBC
ODBC

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

Supported programming languages

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

Actionscript

unofficial driver
C
C#
C++
Clojure

unofficial driver
ColdFusion

unofficial driver
D

unofficial driver
Dart

unofficial driver
Delphi

unofficial driver
Erlang
Go
Groovy

unofficial driver
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Lisp

unofficial driver
Lua

unofficial driver
MatLab

unofficial driver
Perl
PHP
PowerShell

unofficial driver
Prolog

unofficial driver
Python
R

unofficial driver
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Smalltalk

unofficial driver
Swift

C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

Java
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

JavaScript

yes

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Sharding

Partitioned by hashed, ranged, or zoned sharding keys. Live resharding allows users to change their shard keys as an online operation with zero downtime.

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-Source deployments with MongoDB Atlas Global Clusters
Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per database

Access rights for users and roles

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
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Competitive advantages

Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Typical application scenarios

AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
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Key customers

ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
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Market metrics

Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
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Licensing and pricing models

MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
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