DBMS > MySQL vs. OpenSearch vs. PostgreSQL

System Properties Comparison MySQL vs. OpenSearch vs. PostgreSQL

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Widely used open source RDBMS

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Search engine
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Vector DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

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

Score	964.98
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	17.38
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Search engines
	#2	Vector DBMS

Score	674.32
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Website

www.mysql.com

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

www.postgresql.org

Technical documentation

dev.mysql.com/doc

opensearch.org/docs/latest

www.postgresql.org/docs

Developer

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

The OpenSearch Software Foundation

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Initial release

1995

2021

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

Current release

9.0.0, July 2024

2.19, February 2025

16.4, August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

BSD

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 and C++

Java

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like query language

yes

standard with numerous extensions

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

Supported programming languages

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

proprietary syntax

yes

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Sharding

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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