DBMS > FoundationDB vs. GBase vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. QuestDB vs. ScyllaDB

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. GBase vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. QuestDB vs. ScyllaDB

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Description

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

Widely used RDBMS in China, including analytical, transactional, distributed transactional, and cloud-native data warehousing.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Cassandra and DynamoDB compatible wide column store

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Time Series DBMS

Wide column store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

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

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

Score	1.07
Rank	#185	Overall
	#86	Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.52
Rank	#109	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Score	4.75
Rank	#68	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.gbase.cn

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

questdb.io

www.scylladb.com

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

questdb.io/docs

docs.scylladb.com

Developer

FoundationDB

General Data Technology Co., Ltd.

Microsoft

QuestDB Technology Inc

ScyllaDB

Initial release

2013

2004

2014

2015

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

GBase 8a, GBase 8s, GBase 8c

ScyllaDB Open Source 5.4.1, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license available

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.

Scylla Cloud: Create real-time applications that run at global scale with Scylla Cloud, the industry’s most powerful NoSQL DBaaS

Implementation language

C++

C, Java, Python

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

yes

JSON types

yes

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 properties auto-indexed by default

yes

cluster global secondary indices

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

Standard with numerous extensions

SQL-like query language

SQL with time-series extensions

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C API
JDBC
ODBC

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

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Proprietary protocol (CQL)

compatible with CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
RESTful HTTP API (DynamoDB compatible)
Thrift

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

For CQL interface: C#, C++, Clojure, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala
For DynamoDB interface: .Net, ColdFusion, Erlang, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

user defined functions

JavaScript

yes, Lua

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning (by range, list and hash) and vertical partitioning

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID for single-table writes

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

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

through memory mapped files

yes

in-memory tables

User concepts

Access control

yes

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Access rights for users can be defined per object

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

ScyllaDB is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale. It’s adopted...
» more

Competitive advantages

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Highly-performant (efficiently utilizes full resources of a node and network; millions...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

ScyllaDB is ideal for applications that require high throughput and low latency at...
» more

Key customers

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Discord, Epic Games, Expedia, Zillow, Comcast, Disney+ Hotstar, Samsung, ShareChat,...
» more

Market metrics

ScyllaDB typically offers ~75% total cost of ownership savings, with ~5X higher throughput...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

ScyllaDB Open Source - free open source software (AGPL) ScyllaDB Enterprise - subscription-based...
» more

News

QuestDB and Raspberry Pi 5 benchmark, a pocket-sized powerhouse
8 May 2024

Build your own resource monitor with QuestDB and Grafana
6 May 2024

Does "vpmovzxbd" Scare You? Here's Why it Doesn't Have To
12 April 2024

Create an ADS-B flight radar with QuestDB and a Raspberry Pi
8 April 2024

Build a temperature IoT sensor with Raspberry Pi Pico & QuestDB
5 April 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.