DBMS > Memcached vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NCache vs. TimescaleDB vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison Memcached vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NCache vs. TimescaleDB vs. TimesTen

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

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

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

Key-value store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Key-value store

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

Relational DBMS

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

Score	20.74
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Score	29.85
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	0.98
Rank	#196	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Score	4.87
Rank	#74	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Score	1.35
Rank	#165	Overall
	#75	Relational DBMS

Website

www.memcached.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

www.timescale.com

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

Technical documentation

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

docs.timescale.com

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

Developer

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Microsoft

Alachisoft

Timescale

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

2003

2014

2005

2017

1998

Current release

1.6.25, March 2024

5.3, September 2022

2.13.0, November 2023

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

BSD license

commercial

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

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#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

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

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

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

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

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

PL/SQL

Triggers

JavaScript

yes

Notifications

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, with selectable consistency level

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

yes

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

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

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

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

NCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
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Competitive advantages

NCache is 100% .NET/ .NET Core based which fully supports ASP.NET Core Sessions ,...
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Typical application scenarios

NCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
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Key customers

Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
» more

Market metrics

Market Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
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