DBMS > Datomic vs. FoundationDB vs. H2 vs. Milvus vs. searchxml

System Properties Comparison Datomic vs. FoundationDB vs. H2 vs. Milvus vs. searchxml

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Datomic builds on immutable values, supports point-in-time queries and uses 3rd party systems for durability

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

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

A DBMS designed for efficient storage of vector data and vector similarity searches

DBMS for structured and unstructured content wrapped with an application server

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Vector DBMS

Native XML DBMS
Search engine

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.59
Rank	#150	Overall
	#69	Relational DBMS

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	8.13
Rank	#49	Overall
	#31	Relational DBMS

Score	2.31
Rank	#113	Overall
	#3	Vector DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#7	Native XML DBMS
	#25	Search engines

Website

www.datomic.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.h2database.com

milvus.io

www.searchxml.net/category/products

Technical documentation

docs.datomic.com

apple.github.io/foundationdb

www.h2database.com/html/main.html

milvus.io/docs/overview.md

www.searchxml.net/support/handouts

Developer

Cognitect

FoundationDB

Thomas Mueller

informationpartners gmbh

Initial release

2012

2013

2005

2019

2015

Current release

1.0.6735, June 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

2.2.220, July 2023

2.3.4, January 2024

1.0

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

dual-licence (Mozilla public license, Eclipse public license)

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

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.

Zilliz Cloud – Cloud-native service for Milvus

Implementation language

Java, Clojure

C++

Java

C++, Go

C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
macOS

10.14 or later
Windows

with WSL 2 enabled

Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

yes

Vector, Numeric and String

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

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP API
WebDAV
XQuery
XSLT

Supported programming languages

Clojure
Java

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

Java

C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C++

most other programming languages supported via APIs

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

in SQL-layer only

Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions

yes

on the application server

Triggers

By using transaction functions

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Sharding

none

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

yes

With clustering: 2 database servers on different computers operate on identical copies of a database

yes

sychronisation to multiple collections

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Session Consistency
Tunable 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

ACID

multiple readers, single writer

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using external storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Couchbase and others)

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

recommended only for testing and development

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Role based access control and fine grained access rights

Domain, group and role-based access control at the document level and for application services

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Milvus is an open-source and cloud-native vector database built for production-ready...
» more

Competitive advantages

Highly available, versatile, and robust with millisecond latency. Supports batch...
» more

Typical application scenarios

RAG: retrieval augmented generation Video media : video understanding, video deduplication....
» more

Key customers

Milvus is trusted by thousands of enterprises, including PayPal, eBay, IKEA, LINE,...
» more

Market metrics

As of January 2024, 25k+ GitHub stars 10M+ downloads and installations 3k+ enterprise...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Milvus was released under the open-source Apache License 2.0 in October 2019. Fully-managed...
» more

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

Related products and services

We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

Vector databases
2 June 2023, Matthias Gelbmann

show all

Recent citations in the news

Nubank buys firm behind Clojure programming language
28 July 2020, Finextra

Zoona Case Study
16 December 2017, AWS Blog

Architecting Software for Leverage
13 November 2021, InfoQ.com

TerminusDB Takes on Data Collaboration with a git-Like Approach
1 December 2020, The New Stack

Brazil’s Nubank acquires US software firm Cognitect, creator of Clojure and Datomic
24 July 2020, LatamList

provided by Google News

FoundationDB team's new venture, Antithesis, raises $47M to enhance software testing
13 February 2024, SiliconANGLE News

Stonebraker Seeks to Invert the Computing Paradigm with DBOS
12 March 2024, Datanami

Antithesis raises $47M to launch an automated testing platform for software
13 February 2024, TechCrunch

Antithesis Launches Out Of Stealth To Revolutionize Software Reliability
13 February 2024, Yahoo Finance

Deno adds scaleable messaging with new Queues feature, sparks debate about proprietary services • DEVCLASS
28 September 2023, DevClass

provided by Google News

How NVIDIA GPU Acceleration Supercharged Milvus Vector Database
26 March 2024, The New Stack

AI-Powered Search Engine With Milvus Vector Database on Vultr
31 January 2024, SitePoint

Milvus 2.4 Unveils Game-Changing Features for Enhanced Vector Search
20 March 2024, GlobeNewswire

Zilliz Unveils Game-Changing Features for Vector Search
22 March 2024, Datanami

IBM watsonx.data’s integrated vector database: unify, prepare, and deliver your data for AI
9 April 2024, ibm.com

provided by Google News

Share this page