DBMS > Couchbase vs. HarperDB vs. Lovefield vs. ObjectBox vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. HarperDB vs. Lovefield vs. ObjectBox vs. Sphinx

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

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Extremely fast embedded database for small devices, IoT and Mobile

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

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

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	0.60
Rank	#244	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	0.33
Rank	#286	Overall
	#131	Relational DBMS

Score	1.29
Rank	#166	Overall
	#5	Object oriented DBMS

Score	5.95
Rank	#55	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

www.couchbase.com

www.harperdb.io

google.github.io/lovefield

objectbox.io

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

docs.harperdb.io/docs

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

docs.objectbox.io

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

HarperDB

Google

ObjectBox Limited

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2011

2017

2014

2017

2001

Current release

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

3.1, August 2021

2.1.12, February 2017

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

commercial

free community edition available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache License 2.0

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence 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.

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Node.js

JavaScript

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

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

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Android
iOS
Linux
macOS
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

dynamic schema

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

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

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like data manipulation statements

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

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
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

Proprietary native API

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

JavaScript

C
C++
Dart
Go
Java
JavaScript

planned (as of Jan 2019)
Kotlin
Python

planned (as of Jan 2019)
Swift

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

Using read-only observers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

none

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

none

online/offline synchronization between client and server

none

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic execution of specific operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

using MemoryDB

User concepts

Access control

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

Access rights for users and roles

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

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