DBMS > Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Snowflake vs. Vertica vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Snowflake vs. Vertica vs. Weaviate

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

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

Cloud or off-cloud analytical database and query engine for structured and semi-structured streaming and batch data. Machine learning platform with built-in algorithms, data preparation capabilities, and model evaluation and management via SQL or Python.

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

Primary database model

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Column oriented

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

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

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	10.68
Rank	#43	Overall
	#27	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.snowflake.com

www.vertica.com

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

vertica.com/documentation

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

OpenText

previously Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2014

2005

2019

Current release

12.0.3, January 2023

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Limited community edition free

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

on-premises, all major clouds - Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and containers

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

Yes, but also semi-structure/unstructured data storage, and complex hierarchical data (like Parquet) stored and/or queried.

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON 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

No Indexes Required. Different internal optimization strategy, but same functionality included.

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 1999 standard plus machine learning, time series and geospatial. Over 650 functions.

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

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

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
Kafka Connector
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spark Connector
vSQL

character-based, interactive, front-end utility

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

user defined functions

yes, PostgreSQL PL/pgSQL, with minor differences

Triggers

JavaScript

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes, called Custom Alerts

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

horizontal partitioning, hierarchical partitioning

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Multi-source replication

One, or more copies of data replicated across nodes, or object-store used for repository.

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Bi-directional Spark integration

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

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard; supports Kerberos, LDAP, Ident and hash

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Deploy-anywhere database for large-scale analytical deployments. Deploy off-cloud,...
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Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Fast, scalable, and capable of high concurrency. Separation of compute/storage leverages...
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Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

Communication and network analytics, Embedded analytics, Fraud monitoring and Risk...
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As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

Abiba Systems, Adform, adMarketplace, AmeriPride, Anritsu, AOL, Avito, Auckland Transport,...
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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

Cost-based models and subscription-based models are both available. One license is...
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Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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