DBMS > Couchbase vs. FoundationDB vs. Informix vs. Oracle Rdb vs. PouchDB

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. FoundationDB vs. Informix vs. Oracle Rdb vs. PouchDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

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

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

JavaScript DBMS with an API inspired by CouchDB

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Document store

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
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	1.06
Rank	#185	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	1.14
Rank	#178	Overall
	#80	Relational DBMS

Score	2.34
Rank	#112	Overall
	#21	Document stores

Website

www.couchbase.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.ibm.com/products/informix

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

pouchdb.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

apple.github.io/foundationdb

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/rdb-doc.html

pouchdb.com/guides

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

FoundationDB

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Oracle, originally developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

2011

2013

1984

2012

Current release

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

6.2.28, November 2020

14.10.FC5, November 2020

7.4.1.1, 2021

7.1.1, June 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Open Source

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.

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C++

C, C++ and Java

JavaScript

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

HP Open VMS

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free)

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

SQL

Support of SQL

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

supported in specific SQL layer only

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

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

HTTP REST

only for PouchDB Server
JavaScript API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

.Net
C
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

JavaScript

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

in SQL-layer only

yes

View functions in JavaScript

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

with a proxy-based framework, named couchdb-lounge

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication

also with CouchDB databases
Source-replica replication

also with CouchDB databases

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

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes, on a single node

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, WebSQL or LevelDB as backend

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

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