DBMS > MongoDB vs. mSQL vs. Postgres-XL vs. Sphinx vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison MongoDB vs. mSQL vs. Postgres-XL vs. Sphinx vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

One of the most popular document stores available both as a fully managed cloud service and for deployment on self-managed infrastructure

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

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

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS
Search engine

integrated Lucene index, currently in MongoDB Atlas only.
Time Series DBMS

Time Series Collections introduced in Release 5.0
Vector DBMS

currently available in the MongoDB Atlas cloud service only

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	421.65
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	1.27
Rank	#167	Overall
	#77	Relational DBMS

Score	0.49
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

www.mongodb.com

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

www.postgres-xl.org

sphinxsearch.com

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

sphinxsearch.com/docs

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

MongoDB, Inc

Hughes Technologies

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2009

1994

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2001

2019

Current release

6.0.7, June 2023

4.4, October 2021

10 R1, October 2018

3.5.1, February 2023

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MongoDB Inc.'s Server Side Public License v1. Prior versions were published under GNU AGPL v3.0. Commercial licenses are also available.

commercial

free licenses can be provided

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

MongoDB Atlas: Global multi-cloud database with unmatched data distribution and mobility across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, built-in automation for resource and workload optimization, and so much more.

Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

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

Linux
macOS

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

Although schema-free, documents of the same collection often follow the same structure. Optionally impose all or part of a schema by defining a JSON schema.

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, integer, double, decimal, boolean, date, object_id, geospatial

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

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

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

JDBC
ODBC

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

Proprietary protocol

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

Actionscript

unofficial driver
C
C#
C++
Clojure

unofficial driver
ColdFusion

unofficial driver
D

unofficial driver
Dart

unofficial driver
Delphi

unofficial driver
Erlang
Go
Groovy

unofficial driver
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Lisp

unofficial driver
Lua

unofficial driver
MatLab

unofficial driver
Perl
PHP
PowerShell

unofficial driver
Prolog

unofficial driver
Python
R

unofficial driver
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Smalltalk

unofficial driver
Swift

C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Partitioned by hashed, ranged, or zoned sharding keys. Live resharding allows users to change their shard keys as an online operation with zero downtime.

none

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

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

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-Source deployments with MongoDB Atlas Global Clusters
Source-replica replication

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

none

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID

MVCC

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

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

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
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Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
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As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
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All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
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As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
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Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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