DBMS > Couchbase vs. Dgraph vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. PostgreSQL vs. Trafodion
System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. Dgraph vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. PostgreSQL vs. Trafodion
Editorial information provided by DB-Engines | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Name | Couchbase Originally called Membase Xexclude from comparison | Dgraph Xexclude from comparison | Google Cloud Spanner Xexclude from comparison | PostgreSQL Xexclude from comparison | Trafodion Xexclude from comparison | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Apache Trafodion has been retired in 2021. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines Ranking. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Description | A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database | Distributed and scalable native Graph DBMS | A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play. | Widely used open source RDBMS Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL | Transactional SQL-on-Hadoop DBMS | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Primary database model | Document store | Graph DBMS | Relational DBMS | Relational DBMS with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module. | 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 | Document store Graph DBMS with Apache Age Spatial DBMS Vector DBMS with pgvector extension | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Website | www.couchbase.com | dgraph.io | cloud.google.com/spanner | www.postgresql.org | trafodion.apache.org | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Technical documentation | docs.couchbase.com | dgraph.io/docs | cloud.google.com/spanner/docs | www.postgresql.org/docs | trafodion.apache.org/documentation.html | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Developer | Couchbase, Inc. | Dgraph Labs, Inc. | PostgreSQL Global Development Group www.postgresql.org/developer | Apache Software Foundation, originally developed by HP | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Initial release | 2011 | 2016 | 2017 | 1989 1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL | 2014 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Current release | Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023 | 16.3, May 2024 | 2.3.0, February 2019 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
License Commercial or Open Source | Open Source Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available | Open Source Apache 2.0 | commercial | Open Source BSD | Open Source Apache 2.0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cloud-based only Only available as a cloud service | no | no | yes | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Implementation language | C, C++, Go and Erlang | Go | C | C++, Java | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Server operating systems | Linux OS X Windows | Linux OS X Windows | hosted | FreeBSD HP-UX Linux NetBSD OpenBSD OS X Solaris Unix Windows | Linux | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Data scheme | schema-free | schema-free | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Typing predefined data types such as float or date | yes | yes | yes | yes | 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. | no | no | yes specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality. | no | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Secondary indexes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
SQL Support of SQL | SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases | no | yes Query statements complying to ANSI 2011 | yes standard with numerous extensions | 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 | GraphQL query language gRPC (using protocol buffers) API HTTP API | gRPC (using protocol buffers) API JDBC At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements. RESTful HTTP API | ADO.NET JDBC native C library ODBC streaming API for large objects | ADO.NET JDBC ODBC | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Supported programming languages | .Net C Go Java JavaScript Node.js Kotlin PHP Python Ruby Scala | C# C++ Go Java JavaScript (Node.js) PHP Python Ruby | Go Java JavaScript (Node.js) Python | .Net C C++ Delphi Java JDBC JavaScript (Node.js) Perl PHP Python Tcl | All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC/ADO.Net | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Server-side scripts Stored procedures | Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++ | no | no | user defined functions realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc. | Java Stored Procedures | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Triggers | yes via the TAP protocol | no | no | yes | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Partitioning methods Methods for storing different data on different nodes | Automatic Sharding | yes | Sharding | partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash | Sharding | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Replication methods Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes | Multi-source replication including cross data center replication Source-replica replication | Synchronous replication via Raft | Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances. | Source-replica replication other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions | yes, via HBase | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
MapReduce Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods | yes | no | yes using Google Cloud Dataflow | no | yes via user defined functions and HBase | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Consistency concepts Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system | Eventual Consistency Immediate Consistency selectable on a per-operation basis | Immediate Consistency | Immediate Consistency | Immediate Consistency | Immediate Consistency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Foreign keys Referential integrity | no | no | yes by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Transaction concepts Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data | ACID | ACID | ACID Strict serializable isolation | ACID | ACID | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Concurrency Support for concurrent manipulation of data | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Durability Support for making data persistent | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In-memory capabilities Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only. | yes Ephemeral buckets | no | no | no | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
User concepts Access control | User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control. | no Planned for future releases | Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Couchbase Originally called Membase | Dgraph | Google Cloud Spanner | PostgreSQL | Trafodion | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DB-Engines blog posts | Couchbase climbs up the DB-Engines Ranking, increasing its popularity by 10% every month | PostgreSQL is the DBMS of the Year 2023 Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2022, defending the title from last year Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2021 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Recent citations in the news | Database company Couchbase cruises to another solid earnings and revenue beat Couchbase (NASDAQ:BASE) Posts Better-Than-Expected Sales In Q1, Next Quarter's Growth Looks Optimistic Couchbase, Inc. (NASDAQ:BASE) Shares Slammed 29% But Getting In Cheap Might Be Difficult Regardless Couchbase, Inc. (BASE) Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript Couchbase, Inc. (BASE) Tops Q1 EPS by 5c; offers outlook provided by Google News | Dgraph on AWS: Setting up a horizontally scalable graph database | Amazon Web Services Popular Open Source GraphQL Company Dgraph Secures $6M in Seed Round with New Leadership Dgraph launches Slash GraphQL, a GraphQL-native database Backend-as-a-Service Dgraph raises $11.5 million for scalable graph database solutions Dgraph Rises to the Top Graph Database on GitHub With 11 G2 Badges and 11M Downloads provided by Google News | Google Improves Cloud Spanner: More Compute and Storage without Price Increase Google turns up the heat on AWS, claims Cloud Spanner is half the cost of DynamoDB Google makes its Cloud Spanner database service faster and more cost-efficient Google Cloud just fired a major volley at AWS as the cloud wars heat up Google Spanner: When Do You Need to Move to It? provided by Google News | PostgreSQL Tutorial: Definition, Commands, & Features Raise the bar on AI-powered app development with Azure Database for PostgreSQL How To Schedule PostgreSQL Backups With GitHub Actions How to implement a better like, views, comment counters in PostgreSQL? Enterprise DB begins rolling AI features into PostgreSQL provided by Google News | Evaluating HTAP Databases for Machine Learning Applications Low-latency, distributed database architectures are critical for emerging fog applications provided by Google News |
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