DBMS > PostgreSQL vs. SQLite vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison PostgreSQL vs. SQLite vs. Weaviate

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Widely used open source RDBMS

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

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

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	667.25
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	114.09
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Score	1.86
Rank	#123	Overall
	#11	Vector DBMS

Website

www.postgresql.org

www.sqlite.org

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

www.postgresql.org/docs

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2000

2019

Current release

16.4, August 2024

3.46.1 (13 August 2024), August 2024

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

BSD

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.

PostgreSQL Flex @ STACKIT offers managed PostgreSQL Instances with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed and several extensions available, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
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

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

Secondary indexes

yes

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard with numerous extensions

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

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

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

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

user defined functions

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

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

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

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

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

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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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