DBMS > FoundationDB vs. SQLite vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. SQLite vs. Weaviate

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

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

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Vector DBMS

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	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.sqlite.org

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

FoundationDB

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2013

2000

2019

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Public Domain

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

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

dynamic column types

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

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

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

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

User concepts

Access control

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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