DBMS > Couchbase vs. FoundationDB vs. MarkLogic vs. Postgres-XL vs. Transbase

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. FoundationDB vs. MarkLogic vs. Postgres-XL vs. Transbase

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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.

Operational and transactional Enterprise NoSQL database

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

A resource-optimized, high-performance, universally applicable RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Document store
Native XML DBMS
RDF store

as of version 7
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

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	5.92
Rank	#58	Overall
	#10	Document stores
	#1	Native XML DBMS
	#1	RDF stores
	#6	Search engines

Score	0.49
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	0.11
Rank	#341	Overall
	#150	Relational DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.marklogic.com

www.postgres-xl.org

www.transaction.de/en/products/transbase.html

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

apple.github.io/foundationdb

docs.marklogic.com

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

www.transaction.de/en/products/transbase/features.html

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

FoundationDB

MarkLogic Corp.

Transaction Software GmbH

Initial release

2011

2013

2001

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

1987

Current release

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

6.2.28, November 2020

11.0, December 2022

10 R1, October 2018

Transbase 8.3, 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Mozilla public license

commercial

free development license

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 and C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

Schema can be enforced

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

SQL92

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

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

Java API
Node.js Client API
ODBC
proprietary Optic API

Proprietary Query API, introduced with version 9
RESTful HTTP API
SPARQL
WebDAV
XDBC
XQuery
XSLT

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native 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

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Objective-C
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

in SQL-layer only

yes

via XQuery or JavaScript

user defined functions

yes

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

via Hadoop Connector, HDFS Direct Access and in-database MapReduce jobs

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

can act as a resource manager in an XA/JTA transaction

ACID

MVCC

yes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes, with Range Indexes

User concepts

Access control

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

Role-based access control at the document and subdocument levels

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

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.