DBMS > FoundationDB vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. TerminusDB

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. TerminusDB

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

Search-as-a-service for web and mobile app development

Widely used in-process key-value store

Scalable Graph Database platform making enterprise data available by exploiting inferred entities and relationships

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Key-value store

supports sorted and unsorted key sets
Native XML DBMS

in the Oracle Berkeley DB XML version

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Vector DBMS

Document store
RDF 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	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	5.59
Rank	#63	Overall
	#7	Search engines

Score	2.21
Rank	#117	Overall
	#20	Key-value stores
	#3	Native XML DBMS

Score	0.17
Rank	#325	Overall
	#29	Graph DBMS

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/berkeleydb.html

terminusdb.com

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search

docs.oracle.com/cd/E17076_05/html/index.html

terminusdb.github.io/terminusdb/#

Developer

FoundationDB

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Microsoft

Oracle

originally developed by Sleepycat, which was acquired by Oracle

DataChemist Ltd.

Initial release

2013

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2015

1994

2018

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

11.3.2, February 2024

18.1.40, May 2020

11.0.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

commercial

Open Source

commercial license available

Open Source

GPL V3

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 and C++

C, Java, C++ (depending on the Berkeley DB edition)

Prolog, Rust

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

hosted

AIX
Android
FreeBSD
iOS
Linux
OS X
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

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

only with the Berkeley DB XML edition

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

SQL interfaced based on SQLite is available

SQL-like query language (WOQL)

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

RESTful HTTP API

OWL
RESTful HTTP API
WOQL (Web Object Query Language)

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

.Net

Figaro is a .Net framework assembly that extends Berkeley DB XML into an embeddable database engine for .NET
others

Third-party libraries to manipulate Berkeley DB files are available for many languages
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party binding
Perl
Python
Tcl

JavaScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

yes

Triggers

yes

only for the SQL API

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Graph Partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Source-replica replication

Journaling Streams

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

in-memory journaling

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

using Azure authentication

Role-based access control

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
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Competitive advantages

MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
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Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
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Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
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Market metrics

MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
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Licensing and pricing models

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
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