DBMS > Google Cloud Firestore vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Sphinx vs. Tkrzw vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Firestore vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Sphinx vs. Tkrzw vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Cloud Firestore is an auto-scaling document database for storing, syncing, and querying data for mobile and web apps. It offers seamless integration with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

A concept of libraries, allowing an application program to store and query key-value pairs in a file. Successor of Tokyo Cabinet and Kyoto Cabinet

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	7.85
Rank	#51	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#60	Key-value stores

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/firestore

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

sphinxsearch.com

dbmx.net/tkrzw

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

sphinxsearch.com/docs

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Google

Microsoft

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Mikio Hirabayashi

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2017

1989

2001

2020

2019

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

3.5.1, February 2023

0.9.3, August 2020

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

full-text index on all search fields

yes

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

Android
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Proprietary protocol

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
Python

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

C++
Java
Python
Ruby

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes, Firebase Rules & Cloud Functions

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Triggers

yes, with Cloud Functions

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Using Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using specific database classes

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management. Security Rules for 3rd party authentication using Firebase Auth.

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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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