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DBMS > Elasticsearch vs. PostgreSQL vs. Realm vs. Riak KV vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Elasticsearch vs. PostgreSQL vs. Realm vs. Riak KV vs. Sphinx

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameElasticsearch  Xexclude from comparisonPostgreSQL  Xexclude from comparisonRealm  Xexclude from comparisonRiak KV  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionA distributed, RESTful modern search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene infoElasticsearch lets you perform and combine many types of searches such as structured, unstructured, geo, and metricWidely used open source RDBMS infoDeveloped as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQLA DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core DataDistributed, fault tolerant key-value storeOpen source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases
Primary database modelSearch engineRelational DBMS infowith object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.Document storeKey-value store infowith links between data sets and object tags for the creation of secondary indexesSearch engine
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS
Document store
Graph DBMS infowith Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS infowith pgvector extension
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score132.83
Rank#7  Overall
#1  Search engines
Score636.25
Rank#4  Overall
#4  Relational DBMS
Score7.41
Rank#52  Overall
#8  Document stores
Score4.01
Rank#79  Overall
#9  Key-value stores
Score5.95
Rank#55  Overall
#5  Search engines
Websitewww.elastic.co/­elasticsearchwww.postgresql.orgrealm.iosphinxsearch.com
Technical documentationwww.elastic.co/­guide/­en/­elasticsearch/­reference/­current/­index.htmlwww.postgresql.org/­docsrealm.io/­docswww.tiot.jp/­riak-docs/­riak/­kv/­latestsphinxsearch.com/­docs
DeveloperElasticPostgreSQL Global Development Group infowww.postgresql.org/­developerRealm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019OpenSource, formerly Basho TechnologiesSphinx Technologies Inc.
Initial release20101989 info1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL201420092001
Current release8.6, January 202316.3, May 20243.2.0, December 20223.5.1, February 2023
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoElastic LicenseOpen Source infoBSDOpen SourceOpen Source infoApache version 2, commercial enterprise editionOpen Source infoGPL version 2, commercial licence available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenonononono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

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Implementation languageJavaCErlangC++
Server operating systemsAll OS with a Java VMFreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows
Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows
Linux
OS X
FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeschema-free infoFlexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistentyesyesschema-freeyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyesnono
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.noyes infospecific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.nono
Secondary indexesyes infoAll search fields are automatically indexedyesyesrestrictedyes infofull-text index on all search fields
SQL infoSupport of SQLSQL-like query languageyes infostandard with numerous extensionsnonoSQL-like query language (SphinxQL)
APIs and other access methodsJava API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects
HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface
Proprietary protocol
Supported programming languages.Net
Groovy
Community Contributed Clients
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java infoJDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl
.Net
Java infowith Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift
C infounofficial client library
C#
C++ infounofficial client library
Clojure infounofficial client library
Dart infounofficial client library
Erlang
Go infounofficial client library
Groovy infounofficial client library
Haskell infounofficial client library
Java
JavaScript infounofficial client library
Lisp infounofficial client library
Perl infounofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala infounofficial client library
Smalltalk infounofficial client library
C++ infounofficial client library
Java
Perl infounofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby infounofficial client library
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresyesuser defined functions inforealized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.no inforuns within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessaryErlangno
Triggersyes infoby using the 'percolation' featureyesyes infoChange Listenersyes infopre-commit hooks and post-commit hooksno
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingpartitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hashnoneSharding infono "single point of failure"Sharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesyesSource-replica replication infoother methods possible by using 3rd party extensionsnoneselectable replication factornone
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsES-Hadoop Connectornonoyesno
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemEventual Consistency infoSynchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, allImmediate ConsistencyImmediate ConsistencyEventual Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integritynoyesnono infolinks between data sets can be storedno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of datanoACIDACIDnono
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyesyes infoThe original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.Memcached and Redis integrationnoyes infoIn-Memory realm
User concepts infoAccess controlfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardyesyes, using Riak Securityno

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More resources
ElasticsearchPostgreSQLRealmRiak KVSphinx
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