DBMS > Couchbase vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TerminusDB

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TerminusDB

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

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

High performance Time Series DBMS

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Scalable Graph Database platform making enterprise data available by exploiting inferred entities and relationships

Primary database model

Document store

Document store
Key-value store
Object oriented DBMS
Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Graph 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

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
RDF store

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

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

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

Score	7.55
Rank	#53	Overall
	#3	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.17
Rank	#325	Overall
	#29	Graph DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

www.intersystems.com/products/intersystems-iris

kx.com

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

terminusdb.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

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

code.kx.com

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

terminusdb.github.io/terminusdb/#

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

InterSystems

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Microsoft

DataChemist Ltd.

Initial release

2011

2018

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

1989

2018

Current release

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

2023.3, June 2023

3.6, May 2018

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

11.0.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

commercial

free 32-bit version

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL V3

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C++

Prolog, Rust

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
Linux
macOS
Ubuntu
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

depending on used data model

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

table attribute 'grouped'

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

SQL-like query language (q)

yes

SQL-like query language (WOQL)

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
RESTful HTTP API

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

OWL
RESTful HTTP API
WOQL (Web Object Query Language)

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

C
C#
C++
Go
J
Java
JavaScript
Lua
MatLab
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Scala

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

JavaScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

yes

user defined functions

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

yes

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

with views

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Graph Partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Journaling Streams

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

similar paradigm used for internal processing

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory journaling

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.

yes

rights management via user accounts

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Role-based access control

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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Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
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Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
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Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
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Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
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Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
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Licensing and pricing models

upon request
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.