DBMS > Couchbase vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. PouchDB vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. PouchDB vs. Realm

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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

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

JavaScript DBMS with an API inspired by CouchDB

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Primary database model

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Document 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

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	2.28
Rank	#115	Overall
	#21	Document stores

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Website

www.couchbase.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

pouchdb.com

realm.io

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

pouchdb.com/guides

realm.io/docs

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Microsoft

Apache Software Foundation

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

2011

2014

2012

2014

Current release

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

7.1.1, June 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

commercial

Open Source

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

JavaScript

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

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

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON 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

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like 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

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

HTTP REST

only for PouchDB Server
JavaScript API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

JavaScript

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

JavaScript

View functions in JavaScript

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

JavaScript

yes

Change Listeners

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

none

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

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

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

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

yes

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