DBMS > HarperDB vs. MySQL vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. Sphinx vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison HarperDB vs. MySQL vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. Sphinx vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

HarperDB takes the "stack" out of "tech stack" by combining an ultra-fast document-style data store, in-memory cache, real-time message broker, and your application components into a single distributed technology.

Widely used open source RDBMS

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

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

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

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	0.55
Rank	#243	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	1029.49
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	3.50
Rank	#81	Overall
	#44	Relational DBMS

Score	5.97
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	1.48
Rank	#149	Overall
	#8	Vector DBMS

Website

www.harperdb.io

www.mysql.com

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

sphinxsearch.com

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

docs.harperdb.io/docs

dev.mysql.com/doc

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

sphinxsearch.com/docs

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

HarperDB

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

SAP

formerly Sybase

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2017

1995

1992

2001

2019

Current release

3.1, August 2021

9.0.0, July 2024

17, July 2015

3.5.1, February 2023

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free community edition available

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

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

Node.js

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

dynamic schema

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON 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

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

SQL-like data manipulation statements

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary protocol

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

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

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

yes

proprietary syntax

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

none

Sharding

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

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomic execution of specific operations

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes, using LMDB

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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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