DBMS > IBM Cloudant vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Realm vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison IBM Cloudant vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Realm vs. VoltDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.68
Rank	#106	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	1.44
Rank	#158	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

realm.io

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

realm.io/docs

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Microsoft

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2010

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2010

2014

2010

Current release

11.3.2, February 2024

V12

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

commercial

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

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

Erlang

C and C++

C++

Java, C++

Server operating systems

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

hosted

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

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

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

Transact SQL

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Java

Triggers

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, with always 3 replicas available

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a document possible

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Optimistic locking

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

Snapshots and command logging

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

yes

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per database

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
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Competitive advantages

MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
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Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
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Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
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Market metrics

MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
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Licensing and pricing models

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
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