DBMS > Couchbase vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A distributed document store with a powerful search engine and in-built operational and analytical capabilities

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

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
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

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	25.30
Rank	#30	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	21.47
Rank	#35	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	37.96
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Website

www.couchbase.com

www.ibm.com/products/informix

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

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

docs.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

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.

Microsoft

Initial release

2011

1984

2014

Current release

Server: 7.0, July 2021; Mobile: 3, February 2022; Couchbase Capella, October 2021

14.10.FC5, November 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2; Commercial licenses also available

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

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.

Couchbase Capella: a fully managed database-as-a-service that eliminates database management efforts and reduces cost

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C, C++ and Java

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

String, Boolean, Number

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

JSON types

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

Declarative query language (N1QL) that extends ANSI SQL to JSON. First commercial implementation of SQL++.

yes

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs

JDBC
JSON API

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

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Functions and timers in JavaScript

yes

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

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

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

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

User concepts

Access control

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Developed as an alternative to traditionally inflexible relational databases, Couchbase...
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Competitive advantages

Couchbase was architected with several differentiated capabilities: Shared-nothing,...
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Typical application scenarios

Customer 360 for user profile, session store and data aggregation (Comcast, Equifax,...
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Key customers

Amadeus, AT&T, BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), Carrefour, Cisco, Comcast, Disney,...
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Market metrics

Named a leader in the Forrester Wave™: Big Data NoSQL, Q1 2019 Over 10M downloads...
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Licensing and pricing models

The Community Edition (CE) of Couchbase Server and Couchbase Mobile are available...
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.