eXist-db vs IBM Cloudant
eXist-db
exist-db.org
IBM Cloudant
ibm.comSide by side
| Figure | eXist-db | IBM Cloudant |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 7 |
| Spec score · Document Databases | 8.8 (#4) | 7.7 (#18) |
| Integrations | Its WebDAV interface works with compatible clients including Windows Explorer, macOS Finder, oXygen XML Editor, and LibreOffice. | Cloudant integrates with IBM Identity and Access Management, and IBM Key Protect can provide customer-managed encryption keys for supported Cloudant deployments. |
| Product | eXist-db is a NoSQL document database and application platform built around XML. | IBM Cloudant is a managed JSON document database service based on Apache CouchDB. |
| Search | Its implementation-specific full-text search uses Apache Lucene, and the documentation says it does not currently support the W3C XQuery and XPath Full Text 3.0 specification. | Cloudant Search supports language-aware full-text, multi-field, and simple geospatial queries; IBM says to use Views for aggregation beyond faceting. |
| Support | eXist Solutions offers consulting, training, application development, system setup, production monitoring, and individual SLAs on request. | Support for Standard and Dedicated plan instances is optional and provided with IBM Cloud Standard Support; Lite plan support is unavailable. |
Plans
IBM Cloudant
- LitePriced on request
- StandardPriced on request
- EnterprisePriced on request
- EnterprisePrice not published
- LiteFree
- Dedicated HardwarePriced on request
- StandardPrice not published
In their own words
eXist-db
eXist-db is a free, open-source NoSQL document database and application platform centered on XML. Its native engine stores textual or binary documents without requiring a database schema, and it is designed for self-hosted deployment on Linux, macOS, or Windows. The product implements XQuery 3.1, though some features and functions are unsupported, and RESTXQ lets developers deploy RESTful services from XQuery annotations. Its interfaces include REST-style HTTP, SOAP, XML-RPC, and WebDAV. A browser-based IDE provides syntax coloring, code completion, and error checking for application artifacts. Full-text search uses an implementation-specific Apache Lucene approach rather than the W3C XQuery and XPath Full Text 3.0 specification. Security extends Unix permissions with access control lists and external authentication realms. The software is licensed under the LGPL for academic, non-commercial, and commercial use. The documentation lists Java 8 for versions 3.x–6.x or Java 21 for version 7.x, about 500 MB of disk space, and at least 512 MB of memory.