DBMS > CrateDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Lovefield vs. Snowflake vs. SpaceTime

System Properties Comparison CrateDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Lovefield vs. Snowflake vs. SpaceTime

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

Distributed Database based on Lucene

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

SpaceTime is a spatio-temporal DBMS with a focus on performance.

Primary database model

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Spatial DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

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

Score	0.73
Rank	#229	Overall
	#37	Document stores
	#5	Spatial DBMS
	#16	Search engines
	#19	Time Series DBMS
	#8	Vector DBMS

Score	1.07
Rank	#188	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#86	Relational DBMS

Score	0.32
Rank	#290	Overall
	#132	Relational DBMS

Score	123.20
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#396	Overall
	#8	Spatial DBMS

Website

cratedb.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

google.github.io/lovefield

www.snowflake.com

www.mireo.com/spacetime

Technical documentation

cratedb.com/docs

apple.github.io/foundationdb

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Crate

FoundationDB

Google

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Mireo

Initial release

2013

2014

2020

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

2.1.12, February 2017

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

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.

CrateDB Cloud: a distributed SQL database that spreads data and processing across an elastic cluster of shared nothing nodes. CrateDB Cloud enables data insights at scale on Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

Implementation language

Java

C++

JavaScript

C++

Server operating systems

All Operating Systems, including Kubernetes with CrateDB Kubernetes Operator support

Linux
OS X
Windows

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

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free)

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes, but no triggers and constraints, and PostgreSQL compatibility

supported in specific SQL layer only

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

yes

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Prometheus Remote Read/Write
RESTful HTTP API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

.NET
Erlang
Go

community maintained client
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

community maintained client
Perl

community maintained client
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

community maintained client
Scala

community maintained client

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

JavaScript

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C#
C++
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions (Javascript)

in SQL-layer only

user defined functions

Triggers

Using read-only observers

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

yes

Fixed-grid hypercubes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Configurable replication on table/partition-level

yes

none

yes

Real-time block device replication (DRBD)

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Read-after-write consistency on record level

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

unique row identifiers can be used for implementing an optimistic concurrency control strategy

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

using MemoryDB

User concepts

Access control

rights management via user accounts

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

The enterprise database for time series, documents, and vectors. Distributed - Native...
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Competitive advantages

Response time in milliseconds: e ven for complex ad-hoc queries. Massive scaling...
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Typical application scenarios

IoT: accelerate your IIoT projects with CrateDB, delivering real-time analytics...
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Key customers

Across all continents, CrateDB is used by companies of all sizes to meet the most...
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Market metrics

The CrateDB open source project was started in 2013 Honorable Mention in 2021 Gartner®...
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Licensing and pricing models

See CrateDB pricing >
» more

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