DBMS > Couchbase vs. CrateDB vs. Datomic vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. CrateDB vs. Datomic vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

Distributed Database based on Lucene

Datomic builds on immutable values, supports point-in-time queries and uses 3rd party systems for durability

Search-as-a-service for web and mobile app development

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

Primary database model

Document store

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Vector DBMS

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

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	0.71
Rank	#227	Overall
	#37	Document stores
	#5	Spatial DBMS
	#16	Search engines
	#19	Time Series DBMS
	#8	Vector DBMS

Score	1.66
Rank	#144	Overall
	#66	Relational DBMS

Score	5.52
Rank	#59	Overall
	#6	Search engines

Score	3.95
Rank	#80	Overall
	#42	Relational DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

cratedb.com

www.datomic.com

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

cratedb.com/docs

docs.datomic.com

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Crate

Cognitect

Microsoft

SAP

formerly Sybase

Initial release

2011

2013

2012

2015

1992

Current release

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

1.0.7075, December 2023

17, July 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

Open Source

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

CrateDB Cloud: a distributed SQL database that spreads data and processing across an elastic cluster of shared nothing nodes. CrateDB Cloud enables data insights at scale on Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Java

Java, Clojure

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

All Operating Systems, including Kubernetes with CrateDB Kubernetes Operator support

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, 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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

yes, but no triggers and constraints, and PostgreSQL compatibility

yes

APIs and other access methods

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Prometheus Remote Read/Write
RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.NET
Erlang
Go

community maintained client
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

community maintained client
Perl

community maintained client
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

community maintained client
Scala

community maintained client

Clojure
Java

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

user defined functions (Javascript)

yes

Transaction Functions

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

By using transaction functions

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Configurable replication on table/partition-level

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

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

selectable on a per-operation basis

Eventual Consistency
Read-after-write consistency on record level

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

unique row identifiers can be used for implementing an optimistic concurrency control strategy

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using external storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Couchbase and others)

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

recommended only for testing and development

yes

User concepts

Access control

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

rights management via user accounts

yes

using Azure authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

The enterprise database for time series, documents, and vectors. Distributed - Native...
» more

Competitive advantages

Response time in milliseconds: e ven for complex ad-hoc queries. Massive scaling...
» more

Typical application scenarios

IoT: accelerate your IIoT projects with CrateDB, delivering real-time analytics...
» more

Key customers

Across all continents, CrateDB is used by companies of all sizes to meet the most...
» more

Market metrics

The CrateDB open source project was started in 2013 Honorable Mention in 2021 Gartner®...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

See CrateDB pricing >
» more

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.