DBMS > Datomic vs. Redis vs. Sphinx vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Datomic vs. Redis vs. Sphinx vs. TimescaleDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

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

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Search engine

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	1.55
Rank	#144	Overall
	#67	Relational DBMS

Score	149.43
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Score	5.97
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	4.06
Rank	#73	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

docs.datomic.com

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

sphinxsearch.com/docs

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Cognitect

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Timescale

Initial release

2012

2009

2001

2017

Current release

1.0.7180, July 2024

7.2.5, May 2024

3.5.1, February 2023

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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

Java, Clojure

C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

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

with RediSearch module

yes

full-text index on all search fields

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

with RediSQL module

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

Proprietary protocol

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

Supported programming languages

Clojure
Java

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

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

By using transaction functions

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

Sharding

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

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

none

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

through RedisGears

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

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

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

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

recommended only for testing and development

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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