DBMS > CouchDB vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. Redis vs. RRDtool vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. Redis vs. RRDtool vs. Sphinx

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 in-process key-value store

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

Industry standard data logging and graphing tool for time series data. RRD is an acronym for round-robin database.

The data is stored in a circular buffer, thus the system storage footprint remains constant over time.

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

Document store

Key-value store

supports sorted and unsorted key sets
Native XML DBMS

in the Oracle Berkeley DB XML version

Key-value store

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Time Series DBMS

Search engine

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

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

Score	8.30
Rank	#47	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	2.01
Rank	#126	Overall
	#21	Key-value stores
	#3	Native XML DBMS

Score	155.94
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Score	1.90
Rank	#132	Overall
	#11	Time Series DBMS

Score	5.95
Rank	#55	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

couchdb.apache.org

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

redis.com
redis.io

oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

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

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/doc

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

Oracle

originally developed by Sleepycat, which was acquired by Oracle

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

Tobias Oetiker

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2005

1994

2009

1999

2001

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

18.1.40, May 2020

7.2.5, May 2024

1.8.0, 2022

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

commercial license available

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

Open Source

GPL V2 and FLOSS

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

Aiven for Redis: Fully managed in-memory key-value store for all your caching and speedy lookup needs.

Implementation language

Erlang

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

Implementations in Java (e.g. RRD4J) and C# available

C++

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

AIX
Android
FreeBSD
iOS
Linux
OS X
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

HP-UX
Linux

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

Numeric data only

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

Exporting into and restoring from XML files possible

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

with RediSearch module

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL interfaced based on SQLite is available

with RediSQL module

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

in-process shared library
Pipes

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

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

.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#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

with librrd library
C#

with a different implementation of RRDTool
Java

with a different implementation of RRDTool
JavaScript (Node.js)

with a different implementation of RRDTool
Lua
Perl
PHP

with a wrapper library
Python
Ruby

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

Triggers

yes

only for the SQL API

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

none

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

none

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

through RedisGears

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

yes

by using the rrdcached daemon

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

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

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

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