DBMS > Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Milvus

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Milvus

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

A DBMS designed for efficient storage of vector data and vector similarity searches

Primary database model

Key-value store
Wide column store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	3.26
Rank	#92	Overall
	#13	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

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

Score	2.31
Rank	#113	Overall
	#3	Vector DBMS

Website

cloud.google.com/bigtable

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

milvus.io

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

milvus.io/docs/overview.md

Developer

Google

Microsoft

Initial release

2015

2014

2019

Current release

2.3.4, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

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.

Zilliz Cloud – Cloud-native service for Milvus

Implementation language

C++, Go

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
macOS

10.14 or later
Windows

with WSL 2 enabled

Data scheme

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

Vector, Numeric and String

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 properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

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

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

Triggers

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Session Consistency
Tunable Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

Atomic single-row operations

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Role based access control and fine grained access rights

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Milvus is an open-source and cloud-native vector database built for production-ready...
» more

Competitive advantages

Highly available, versatile, and robust with millisecond latency. Supports batch...
» more

Typical application scenarios

RAG: retrieval augmented generation Video media : video understanding, video deduplication....
» more

Key customers

Milvus is trusted by thousands of enterprises, including PayPal, eBay, IKEA, LINE,...
» more

Market metrics

As of January 2024, 25k+ GitHub stars 10M+ downloads and installations 3k+ enterprise...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Milvus was released under the open-source Apache License 2.0 in October 2019. Fully-managed...
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