DBMS > Couchbase vs. HBase vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. NSDb vs. ScyllaDB

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. HBase vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. NSDb vs. ScyllaDB

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

Wide-column store based on Apache Hadoop and on concepts of BigTable

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

Scalable, High-performance Time Series DBMS designed for Real-time Analytics on top of Kubernetes

Cassandra and DynamoDB compatible wide column store

Primary database model

Document store

Wide column store

Document store
Key-value store
Object oriented DBMS
Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Wide column 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

Key-value store

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

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	30.50
Rank	#26	Overall
	#2	Wide column stores

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

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#41	Time Series DBMS

Score	4.75
Rank	#68	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Website

www.couchbase.com

hbase.apache.org

www.intersystems.com/products/intersystems-iris

nsdb.io

www.scylladb.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

hbase.apache.org/book.html

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

nsdb.io/Architecture

docs.scylladb.com

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Powerset

InterSystems

ScyllaDB

Initial release

2011

2008

2018

2017

2015

Current release

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

2.3.4, January 2021

2023.3, June 2023

ScyllaDB Open Source 5.4.1, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license available

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.

Scylla Cloud: Create real-time applications that run at global scale with Scylla Cloud, the industry’s most powerful NoSQL DBaaS

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Java

Java, Scala

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Unix
Windows

using Cygwin

AIX
Linux
macOS
Ubuntu
Windows

Linux
macOS

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free, schema definition possible

depending on used data model

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

options to bring your own types, AVRO

yes

yes: int, bigint, decimal, string

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

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

cluster global secondary indices

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

SQL-like query language

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

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
RESTful HTTP API
Thrift

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

gRPC
HTTP REST
WebSocket

Proprietary protocol (CQL)

compatible with CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
RESTful HTTP API (DynamoDB compatible)
Thrift

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#
C++
Groovy
Java
PHP
Python
Scala

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

Java
Scala

For CQL interface: C#, C++, Clojure, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala
For DynamoDB interface: .Net, ColdFusion, Erlang, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

yes

Coprocessors in Java

yes

yes, Lua

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

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
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

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

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Single row ACID (across millions of columns)

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Using Apache Lucene

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

in-memory tables

User concepts

Access control

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

Access Control Lists (ACL) for RBAC, integration with Apache Ranger for RBAC & ABAC

yes

Access rights for users can be defined per object

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

InterSystems IRIS is a complete cloud-first data platform which includes a multi-model...
» more

ScyllaDB is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale. It’s adopted...
» more

Competitive advantages

Highly-performant (efficiently utilizes full resources of a node and network; millions...
» more

Typical application scenarios

ScyllaDB is ideal for applications that require high throughput and low latency at...
» more

Key customers

Discord, Epic Games, Expedia, Zillow, Comcast, Disney+ Hotstar, Samsung, ShareChat,...
» more

Market metrics

ScyllaDB typically offers ~75% total cost of ownership savings, with ~5X higher throughput...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

ScyllaDB Open Source - free open source software (AGPL) ScyllaDB Enterprise - subscription-based...
» 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.