DBMS > MongoDB vs. Realm vs. Solr vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison MongoDB vs. Realm vs. Solr vs. Sphinx

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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

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

A widely used distributed, scalable search engine based on Apache Lucene

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

Primary database model

Document store

Search engine

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

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	421.08
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	7.41
Rank	#52	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	41.02
Rank	#24	Overall
	#3	Search engines

Score	5.95
Rank	#55	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

Technical documentation

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

realm.io/docs

solr.apache.org/resources.html

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

MongoDB, Inc

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Apache Software Foundation

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2009

2014

2006

2001

Current release

6.0.7, June 2023

9.6.1, May 2024

3.5.1, February 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.

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

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 Flex @ STACKIT offers managed MongoDB Instances with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.
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++

Java

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

runs as a servlet in servlet container (e.g. Tomcat, Jetty is included)

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

Dynamic Fields enables on-the-fly addition of new fields

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

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

yes

supports customizable data types and automatic typing

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 search fields are automatically indexed

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

Solr Parallel SQL Interface

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Proprietary protocol

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

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

.Net
Erlang
Java
JavaScript
any language that supports sockets and either XML or JSON
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Java plugins

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

Change Listeners

yes

User configurable commands triggered on index changes

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

Sharding

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

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

none

yes

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

spark-solr: github.com/lucidworks/spark-solr and streaming expressions to reduce

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

Transaction concepts

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

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID

optimistic locking

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.

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

In-Memory realm

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles

yes

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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Competitive advantages

Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Typical application scenarios

AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
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Key customers

ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
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Market metrics

Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
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Licensing and pricing models

MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.