DBMS > Couchbase vs. MySQL vs. NuoDB vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. PlanetScale

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. MySQL vs. NuoDB vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. PlanetScale

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

Widely used open source RDBMS

NuoDB is a webscale distributed database that supports SQL and ACID transactions

Widely used in-process key-value store

Scalable, distributed, serverless MySQL database platform built on top of Vitess

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

supports sorted and unsorted key sets
Native XML DBMS

in the Oracle Berkeley DB XML version

Relational 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

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	0.89
Rank	#198	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Score	2.21
Rank	#117	Overall
	#20	Key-value stores
	#3	Native XML DBMS

Score	1.59
Rank	#151	Overall
	#70	Relational DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

www.mysql.com

www.3ds.com/nuodb-distributed-sql-database

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/berkeleydb.html

planetscale.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

dev.mysql.com/doc

doc.nuodb.com

docs.oracle.com/cd/E17076_05/html/index.html

planetscale.com/docs

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

Oracle

originally developed by Sleepycat, which was acquired by Oracle

PlanetScale

Initial release

2011

1995

2013

1994

2020

Current release

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

8.4.0, April 2024

18.1.40, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

commercial license available

commercial

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

C and C++

C++

C, Java, C++ (depending on the Berkeley DB edition)

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
Android
FreeBSD
iOS
Linux
OS X
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

Docker
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

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

only with the Berkeley DB XML edition

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

SQL interfaced based on SQLite is available

yes

with proprietary extensions

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
MySQL protocol
ODBC

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

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

.Net

Figaro is a .Net framework assembly that extends Berkeley DB XML into an embeddable database engine for .NET
others

Third-party libraries to manipulate Berkeley DB files are available for many languages
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party binding
Perl
Python
Tcl

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

yes

proprietary syntax

Java, SQL

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

only for the SQL API

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

data is dynamically stored/cached on the nodes where it is read/written

none

Sharding

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

Managed transparently by NuoDB

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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 across shards
Immediate Consistency within a shard

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

tunable commit protocol

ACID

ACID at shard level

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

MVCC

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

Temporary table

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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