DBMS > CouchDB vs. MySQL vs. NuoDB vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. MySQL vs. NuoDB vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. VoltDB

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.

Widely used open source RDBMS

NuoDB is a webscale distributed database that supports SQL and ACID transactions

Widely used in-process key-value store

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

supports sorted and unsorted key sets
Native XML DBMS

in the Oracle Berkeley DB XML version

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	0.89
Rank	#198	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Score	2.21
Rank	#117	Overall
	#20	Key-value stores
	#3	Native XML DBMS

Score	1.44
Rank	#158	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

couchdb.apache.org

www.mysql.com

www.3ds.com/nuodb-distributed-sql-database

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/berkeleydb.html

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

dev.mysql.com/doc

doc.nuodb.com

docs.oracle.com/cd/E17076_05/html/index.html

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

Oracle

originally developed by Sleepycat, which was acquired by Oracle

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2005

1995

2013

1994

2010

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

8.4.0, April 2024

18.1.40, May 2020

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

commercial license available

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

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Implementation language

Erlang

C and C++

C++

C, Java, C++ (depending on the Berkeley DB edition)

Java, C++

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
Android
FreeBSD
iOS
Linux
OS X
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

only with the Berkeley DB XML edition

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

SQL interfaced based on SQLite is available

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

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

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

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net

Figaro is a .Net framework assembly that extends Berkeley DB XML into an embeddable database engine for .NET
others

Third-party libraries to manipulate Berkeley DB files are available for many languages
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party binding
Perl
Python
Tcl

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

yes

proprietary syntax

Java, SQL

Java

Triggers

yes

only for the SQL API

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

data is dynamically stored/cached on the nodes where it is read/written

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

tunable commit protocol

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

MVCC

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Snapshots and command logging

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Temporary table

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per database

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

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