DBMS > Elasticsearch vs. Memcached vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. searchxml vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Elasticsearch vs. Memcached vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. searchxml vs. Weaviate

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

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

DBMS for structured and unstructured content wrapped with an application server

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

Primary database model

Search engine

Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Native XML DBMS
Search engine

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	132.83
Rank	#7	Overall
	#1	Search engines

Score	18.08
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.03
Rank	#390	Overall
	#7	Native XML DBMS
	#24	Search engines

Score	1.52
Rank	#153	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

www.elastic.co/elasticsearch

www.memcached.org

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.searchxml.net/category/products

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

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

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

www.searchxml.net/support/handouts

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Elastic

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Microsoft

informationpartners gmbh

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2010

2003

1989

2015

2019

Current release

8.6, January 2023

1.6.27, May 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

1.0

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Elastic License

Open Source

BSD license

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux
Windows

Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

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

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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 search fields are automatically indexed

yes

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

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Proprietary protocol

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

RESTful HTTP API
WebDAV
XQuery
XSLT

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

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

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

C++

most other programming languages supported via APIs

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

yes

on the application server

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes

sychronisation to multiple collections

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

ES-Hadoop Connector

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

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

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

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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