DBMS > CouchDB vs. PostgreSQL vs. RethinkDB vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. Sphinx
System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. PostgreSQL vs. RethinkDB vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. Sphinx
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| Name | CouchDB  stands for "Cluster Of Unreliable Commodity Hardware" Xexclude from comparison | PostgreSQL Xexclude from comparison | RethinkDB Xexclude from comparison | SAP SQL Anywhere formerly called Adaptive Server Anywhere Xexclude from comparison | Sphinx 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 | DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime. | RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments | Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | Relational DBMS | Search engine | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary database models | Spatial DBMS using the Geocouch extension | Document store Graph DBMS with Apache AgeSpatial DBMS Vector DBMS with pgvector extension | Spatial DBMS | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Website | couchdb.apache.org | www.postgresql.org | rethinkdb.com | www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html | sphinxsearch.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technical documentation | docs.couchdb.org/en/stable | www.postgresql.org/docs | rethinkdb.com/docs | help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere | sphinxsearch.com/docs | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | The Linux Foundation since July 2017 | SAP formerly Sybase | Sphinx Technologies Inc. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Initial release | 2005 | 1989 1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL | 2009 | 1992 | 2001 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Current release | 3.3.3, December 2023 | 16.3, May 2024 | 2.4.1, August 2020 | 17, July 2015 | 3.5.1, February 2023 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| License Commercial or Open Source | Open Source Apache version 2 | Open Source BSD | Open Source Apache Version 2 | commercial | Open Source GPL version 2, commercial licence available | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cloud-based only Only available as a cloud service | no | no | no | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) Database as a Service Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed. | Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Implementation language | Erlang | C | C++ | C++ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server operating systems | Android BSD Linux OS X Solaris Windows | FreeBSD HP-UX Linux NetBSD OpenBSD OS X Solaris Unix Windows | Linux OS X Windows | AIX HP-UX Linux OS X Solaris Windows | FreeBSD Linux NetBSD OS X Solaris Windows | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data scheme | schema-free | yes | schema-free | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Typing predefined data types such as float or date | no | yes | yes string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry | yes | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | yes | yes full-text index on all search fields | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SQL Support of SQL | no | yes standard with numerous extensions | no | yes | SQL-like query language (SphinxQL) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| APIs and other access methods | RESTful HTTP/JSON API | ADO.NET JDBC native C library ODBC streaming API for large objects | ADO.NET HTTP API JDBC ODBC | 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 C C++ Delphi Java JDBCJavaScript (Node.js) Perl PHP Python Tcl | C community-supported driver C# community-supported driverC++ community-supported driverClojure community-supported driverDart community-supported driverErlang community-supported driverGo community-supported driverHaskell community-supported driverJava official driverJavaScript (Node.js) official driverLisp community-supported driverLua community-supported driverObjective-C community-supported driverPerl community-supported driverPHP community-supported driverPython official driverRuby official driverScala community-supported driver | C C# C++ Delphi Java JavaScript (Node.js) Perl PHP Python Ruby | C++ unofficial client library Java Perl unofficial client libraryPHP Python Ruby unofficial client library | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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. | yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl | no | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Triggers | yes | yes | Client-side triggers through changefeeds | yes | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 range based | 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 other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions | Source-replica replication | Source-replica replication Database mirroring | none | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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 | Immediate Consistency | Immediate Consistency | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Foreign keys Referential integrity | no | yes | no | yes | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Transaction concepts Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data | no atomic operations within a single document possible | ACID | Atomic single-document operations | ACID | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Concurrency Support for concurrent manipulation of data | yes strategy: optimistic locking | yes | yes MVCC based | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Durability Support for making data persistent | yes | yes | yes | yes | 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. | no | no | no | yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| User concepts Access control | Access rights for users can be defined per database | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | yes users and table-level permissions | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| More resources | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| CouchDB stands for "Cluster Of Unreliable Commodity Hardware" | PostgreSQL | RethinkDB | SAP SQL Anywhere formerly called Adaptive Server Anywhere | Sphinx | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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