DBMS > IBM Db2 warehouse vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. Snowflake vs. TimescaleDB vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison IBM Db2 warehouse vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. Snowflake vs. TimescaleDB vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Cloud-based data warehousing service

A containerised multi-model DBMS, interoperability and analytics data platform with wide capabilities for vertical and horizontal scalability

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

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

Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store
Object oriented DBMS
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

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

Score	1.30
Rank	#164	Overall
	#75	Relational DBMS

Score	4.05
Rank	#83	Overall
	#14	Document stores
	#10	Key-value stores
	#1	Object oriented DBMS
	#45	Relational DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/db2/warehouse

www.intersystems.com/products/intersystems-iris

www.snowflake.com

www.timescale.com

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

docs.intersystems.com/irislatest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

docs.timescale.com

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

IBM

InterSystems

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Timescale

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2014

2018

2014

2017

2019

Current release

2023.3, June 2023

2.15.0, May 2024

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

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

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
Linux
macOS
Ubuntu
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

depending on used data model

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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.

Import/export of XML data possible

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

.NET Client API
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

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

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PL/SQL, SQL PL

yes

user defined functions

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

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

yes

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Source-replica replication

yes

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

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

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

InterSystems IRIS is a complete cloud-first data platform which includes a multi-model...
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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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