DBMS > Couchbase vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. PouchDB vs. Riak KV vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. PouchDB vs. Riak KV 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

Search-as-a-service for web and mobile app development

JavaScript DBMS with an API inspired by CouchDB

Distributed, fault tolerant key-value store

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

Primary database model

with links between data sets and object tags for the creation of secondary indexes

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

Vector DBMS

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

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	5.59
Rank	#63	Overall
	#7	Search engines

Score	2.28
Rank	#115	Overall
	#21	Document stores

Score	4.10
Rank	#82	Overall
	#9	Key-value stores

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search

pouchdb.com

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search

pouchdb.com/guides

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/kv/latest

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Microsoft

Apache Software Foundation

OpenSource, formerly Basho Technologies

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2011

2015

2012

2009

2019

Current release

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

7.1.1, June 2019

3.2.0, December 2022

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2, commercial enterprise edition

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

JavaScript

Erlang

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

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

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

restricted

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

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

RESTful HTTP API

HTTP REST

only for PouchDB Server
JavaScript API

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

JavaScript

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

View functions in JavaScript

Erlang

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

with a proxy-based framework, named couchdb-lounge

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Multi-source replication

also with CouchDB databases
Source-replica replication

also with CouchDB databases

selectable replication factor

yes

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

links between data sets can be stored

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

by using IndexedDB, WebSQL or LevelDB as backend

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.

yes

using Azure authentication

yes, using Riak Security

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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.
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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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