DBMS > MySQL vs. Realm vs. Sphinx vs. SQLite vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison MySQL vs. Realm vs. Sphinx vs. SQLite vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Widely used open source RDBMS

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

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

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

dev.mysql.com/doc

realm.io/docs

sphinxsearch.com/docs

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

1995

2014

2001

2000

2019

Current release

8.3.0, January 2024

3.5.1, February 2023

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

Public Domain

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.

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

server-less

Data scheme

yes

dynamic column types

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Proprietary protocol

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

proprietary syntax

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

Change Listeners

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

none

Sharding

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

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual 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

via file-system locks

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

In-Memory realm

yes

User concepts

Access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

yes

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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