DBMS > Graph Engine vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. RDF4J vs. TimescaleDB vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Graph Engine vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. RDF4J vs. TimescaleDB vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A distributed in-memory data processing engine, underpinned by a strongly-typed RAM store and a general distributed computation engine

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

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

Primary database model

Graph DBMS
Key-value store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

RDF store

Time Series DBMS

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	0.67
Rank	#232	Overall
	#21	Graph DBMS
	#34	Key-value stores

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	0.74
Rank	#222	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	4.46
Rank	#71	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Score	1.52
Rank	#153	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

www.graphengine.io

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

rdf4j.org

www.timescale.com

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

www.graphengine.io/docs/manual

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

rdf4j.org/documentation

docs.timescale.com

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Microsoft

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Timescale

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2010

2014

2004

2017

2019

Current release

2.15.0, May 2024

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT License

commercial

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Open Source

Apache 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

.NET and C

Java

Server operating systems

.NET

hosted

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

RDF Schemas

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

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

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

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

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
F#
Visual Basic

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

Java
PHP
Python

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

yes

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

JavaScript

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

yes

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

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

optional: either by committing a write-ahead log (WAL) to the local persistent storage or by dumping the memory to a persistent storage

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

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 can be defined down to the item level

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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