DBMS > EXASOL vs. FoundationDB vs. Snowflake vs. Trafodion vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison EXASOL vs. FoundationDB vs. Snowflake vs. Trafodion vs. Weaviate

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Apache Trafodion has been retired in 2021. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines Ranking.

Description

High-performance, in-memory, MPP database specifically designed for in-memory analytics.

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

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

Transactional SQL-on-Hadoop DBMS

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

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

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

Score	1.99
Rank	#124	Overall
	#58	Relational DBMS

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

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

www.exasol.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.snowflake.com

trafodion.apache.org

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

www.exasol.com/resources

apple.github.io/foundationdb

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

trafodion.apache.org/documentation.html

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Exasol

FoundationDB

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Apache Software Foundation, originally developed by HP

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2000

2013

2014

2019

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

2.3.0, February 2019

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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.

Implementation language

C++

C++, Java

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

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

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

.Net
JDBC
ODBC
WebSocket

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

Java
Lua
Python
R

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC/ADO.Net

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

in SQL-layer only

user defined functions

Java Stored Procedures

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

yes

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

yes, via HBase

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Hadoop integration

yes

via user defined functions and HBase

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles according to SQL-standard

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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