DBMS > Couchbase vs. NCache vs. Sphinx vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. NCache vs. Sphinx vs. Weaviate

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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

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

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

Primary database model

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
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

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

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	0.94
Rank	#195	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

sphinxsearch.com

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

sphinxsearch.com/docs

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Alachisoft

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2011

2005

2001

2019

Current release

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

5.3.3, April 2024

3.5.1, February 2023

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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

C#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

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

full-text index on all search fields

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

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

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

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

Proprietary protocol

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Notifications

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

yes

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes, with selectable consistency level

none

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

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

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.

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

NCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
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Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

NCache is 100% .NET/ .NET Core based which fully supports ASP.NET Core Sessions ,...
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Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

NCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
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As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
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All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

Market Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
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As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
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Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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