DBMS > Couchbase vs. MySQL vs. Realm vs. Riak TS vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. MySQL vs. Realm vs. Riak TS vs. TimescaleDB

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

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

Riak TS is a distributed NoSQL database optimized for time series data and based on Riak KV

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Document store

Time Series 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

Relational 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	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	0.20
Rank	#319	Overall
	#27	Time Series DBMS

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

dev.mysql.com/doc

realm.io/docs

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

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Open Source, formerly Basho Technologies

Timescale

Initial release

2011

1995

2014

2015

2017

Current release

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

8.4.0, April 2024

3.0.0, September 2022

2.15.0, May 2024

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

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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 and C++

Erlang

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Linux
OS X

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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

restricted

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes, limited

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

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

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

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
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

yes

proprietary syntax

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Erlang

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Change Listeners

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

none

Sharding

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

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

none

selectable replication factor

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

links between datasets can be stored

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

In-Memory realm

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

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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