DBMS > CouchDB vs. PostgreSQL vs. PouchDB vs. Sphinx vs. TimescaleDB
System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. PostgreSQL vs. PouchDB vs. Sphinx vs. TimescaleDB
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| Name | CouchDB  stands for "Cluster Of Unreliable Commodity Hardware" Xexclude from comparison | PostgreSQL Xexclude from comparison | PouchDB Xexclude from comparison | Sphinx Xexclude from comparison | TimescaleDB Xexclude from comparison | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL | JavaScript DBMS with an API inspired by CouchDB | Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases | A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Primary database model | Document store | Relational DBMS with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module. | Document store | Search engine | Time Series DBMS | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary database models | Spatial DBMS using the Geocouch extension | Document store Graph DBMS with Apache AgeSpatial DBMS Vector DBMS with pgvector extension | Relational DBMS | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Website | couchdb.apache.org | www.postgresql.org | pouchdb.com | sphinxsearch.com | www.timescale.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technical documentation | docs.couchdb.org/en/stable | www.postgresql.org/docs | pouchdb.com/guides | sphinxsearch.com/docs | docs.timescale.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Developer | Apache Software Foundation Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer | PostgreSQL Global Development Group www.postgresql.org/developer | Apache Software Foundation | Sphinx Technologies Inc. | Timescale | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Initial release | 2005 | 1989 1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL | 2012 | 2001 | 2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Current release | 3.3.3, December 2023 | 16.3, May 2024 | 7.1.1, June 2019 | 3.5.1, February 2023 | 2.15.0, May 2024 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| License Commercial or Open Source | Open Source Apache version 2 | Open Source BSD | Open Source | Open Source GPL version 2, commercial licence available | Open Source Apache 2.0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cloud-based only Only available as a cloud service | no | no | no | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Implementation language | Erlang | C | JavaScript | C++ | C | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server operating systems | Android BSD Linux OS X Solaris Windows | FreeBSD HP-UX Linux NetBSD OpenBSD OS X Solaris Unix Windows | server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js) | FreeBSD Linux NetBSD OS X Solaris Windows | Linux OS X Windows | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data scheme | schema-free | yes | schema-free | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Typing predefined data types such as float or date | no | yes | no | no | numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data 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. | no | yes specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality. | no | yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary indexes | yes via views | yes | yes via views | yes full-text index on all search fields | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SQL Support of SQL | no | yes standard with numerous extensions | no | SQL-like query language (SphinxQL) | yes full PostgreSQL SQL syntax | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| APIs and other access methods | RESTful HTTP/JSON API | ADO.NET JDBC native C library ODBC streaming API for large objects | HTTP REST only for PouchDB Server JavaScript API | Proprietary protocol | ADO.NET JDBC native C library ODBC streaming API for large objects | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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++ Delphi Java JDBCJavaScript (Node.js) Perl PHP Python Tcl | JavaScript | C++ unofficial client library Java Perl unofficial client libraryPHP Python Ruby unofficial client library | .Net C C++ Delphi Java JDBCJavaScript Perl PHP Python R Ruby Scheme Tcl | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server-side scripts Stored procedures | View functions in JavaScript | user defined functions realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc. | View functions in JavaScript | no | user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Triggers | yes | yes | yes | no | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Partitioning methods Methods for storing different data on different nodes | Sharding improved architecture with release 2.0 | partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash | Sharding with a proxy-based framework, named couchdb-lounge | Sharding Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported | yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Replication methods Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes | Multi-source replication Source-replica replication | Source-replica replication other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions | Multi-source replication also with CouchDB databases Source-replica replication also with CouchDB databases | none | Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MapReduce Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods | yes | no | yes | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Consistency concepts Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system | Eventual Consistency | Immediate Consistency | Eventual Consistency | Immediate Consistency | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Foreign keys Referential integrity | no | yes | no | no | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Transaction concepts Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data | no atomic operations within a single document possible | ACID | no | no | ACID | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Concurrency Support for concurrent manipulation of data | yes strategy: optimistic locking | yes | yes | yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Durability Support for making data persistent | yes | yes | yes by using IndexedDB, WebSQL or LevelDB as backend | yes The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index. | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In-memory capabilities Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only. | no | no | yes | no | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| User concepts Access control | Access rights for users can be defined per database | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | no | no | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| CouchDB stands for "Cluster Of Unreliable Commodity Hardware" | PostgreSQL | PouchDB | Sphinx | TimescaleDB | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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