DBMS > Couchbase vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. TimesTen vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. TimesTen vs. Weaviate

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

Automatically scaling NoSQL Database as a Service (DBaaS) on the Google Cloud Platform

A containerised multi-model DBMS, interoperability and analytics data platform with wide capabilities for vertical and horizontal scalability

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Document store

Document store
Key-value store
Object oriented DBMS
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Vector 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

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

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	4.47
Rank	#76	Overall
	#12	Document stores

Score	4.05
Rank	#83	Overall
	#14	Document stores
	#10	Key-value stores
	#1	Object oriented DBMS
	#45	Relational DBMS

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

cloud.google.com/datastore

www.intersystems.com/products/intersystems-iris

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

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

cloud.google.com/datastore/docs

docs.intersystems.com/irislatest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Google

InterSystems

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2011

2008

2018

1998

2019

Current release

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

2023.3, June 2023

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

commercial

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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.

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

AIX
Linux
macOS
Ubuntu
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

depending on used data model

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, details here

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like query language (GQL)

yes

GraphQL is used as query language

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

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

using Google App Engine

yes

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

Callbacks using the Google Apps Engine

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication using Paxos

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on type of query and configuration

Strong Consistency is default for entity lookups and queries within an Entity Group (but can instead be made eventually consistent). Other queries are always eventual consistent.

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

via ReferenceProperties or Ancestor paths

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Serializable Isolation within Transactions, Read Committed outside of Transactions

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

yes

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.

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

InterSystems IRIS is a complete cloud-first data platform which includes a multi-model...
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Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

All companies that have data.
» more

Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.