DBMS > Elasticsearch vs. Kdb vs. Memcached vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Rockset

System Properties Comparison Elasticsearch vs. Kdb vs. Memcached vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Rockset

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A distributed, RESTful modern search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene

Elasticsearch lets you perform and combine many types of searches such as structured, unstructured, geo, and metric

High performance Time Series DBMS

In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

A scalable, reliable search and analytics service in the cloud, built on RocksDB

Primary database model

Search engine

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Key-value store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS
Search engine

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

Score	135.35
Rank	#7	Overall
	#1	Search engines

Score	7.55
Rank	#53	Overall
	#3	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	19.42
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	0.79
Rank	#211	Overall
	#35	Document stores

Website

www.elastic.co/elasticsearch

kx.com

www.memcached.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

rockset.com

Technical documentation

www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index.html

code.kx.com

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.rockset.com

Developer

Elastic

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Microsoft

Rockset

Initial release

2010

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2003

2014

2019

Current release

8.6, January 2023

3.6, May 2018

1.6.25, March 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Elastic License

commercial

free 32-bit version

Open Source

BSD license

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.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

dynamic typing

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

ingestion from XML files supported

Secondary indexes

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

table attribute 'grouped'

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

SQL-like query language (q)

SQL-like query language

Read-only SQL queries, including JOINs

APIs and other access methods

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

Proprietary protocol

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

HTTP REST

Supported programming languages

.Net
Groovy
Community Contributed Clients
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Go
J
Java
JavaScript
Lua
MatLab
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Scala

.Net
C
C++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

with views

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Automatic sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Source-replica replication

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

ES-Hadoop Connector

similar paradigm used for internal processing

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

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.

Memcached and Redis integration

yes

User concepts

Access control

rights management via user accounts

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Access rights for users and organizations can be defined via Rockset console

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
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Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
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Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
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Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
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Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
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Licensing and pricing models

upon request
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