DBMS > Microsoft SQL Server vs. RavenDB vs. Sphinx vs. SWC-DB vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Microsoft SQL Server vs. RavenDB vs. Sphinx vs. SWC-DB vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database

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

A high performance, scalable Wide Column DBMS

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.92
Rank	#101	Overall
	#18	Document stores

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	0.01
Rank	#376	Overall
	#13	Wide column stores

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

ravendb.net

sphinxsearch.com

github.com/kashirin-alex/swc-db
www.swcdb.org

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

ravendb.net/docs

sphinxsearch.com/docs

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Microsoft

Hibernating Rhinos

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Alex Kashirin

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

1989

2010

2001

2020

2019

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.4, July 2022

3.5.1, February 2023

0.5, April 2021

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

GPL V3

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

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

yes

SQL-like query language (RQL)

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

SQL-like query language

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

.NET Client API
F# Client API
Go Client API
Java Client API
NodeJS Client API
PHP Client API
Python Client API
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

Proprietary protocol
Thrift

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

C++

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Sharding

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

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Default ACID transactions on the local node (eventually consistent across the cluster). Atomic operations with cluster-wide ACID transactions. Eventual consistency for indexes and full-text search indexes.

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID, Cluster-wide transaction available

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Authorization levels configured per client per database

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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