How to Browse Database Systems by Data Model on dbdb.io

Updated

Go to dbdb.io and use the Browse by Data Model section on the homepage. It lists 14 data models, each with a count of catalogued systems, and clicking a model takes you to the matching list of database entries. This is the fastest route when you already know the technical category you want — for example, a relational engine for an OLTP workload or a vector store for embeddings — rather than searching by product name.

What the data model categories contain

The homepage groups every catalogued system under one of 14 models. The counts shown are the number of systems currently filed under each model:

Data model Systems listed
Relational 473
Key-Value 248
Document / XML 217
Graph 91
Object-Oriented 64
Vector 50
Triplestore / RDF 28
Column Family / Wide-Column 28
Array / Matrix 22
Network 10
Multi-Value 7
Hierarchical 7
Entity-Relationship 4
Entity-Attribute-Value 2

A system can appear under more than one model. Oracle, for instance, is tagged Key-Value, Graph, Triplestore / RDF, Document / XML, and Relational, so browsing a single model will not always give you a clean one-to-one mapping between a product and a category.

Steps to browse by model

  1. Open dbdb.io. The Browse by Data Model block sits on the homepage alongside Featured System and The Leaderboards.
  2. Pick the model that matches your workload. Relational, Key-Value, and Document / XML cover the largest share of the catalogue; Vector, Triplestore / RDF, and Column Family / Wide-Column are smaller but more specific.
  3. Click the model name to open its list of systems.
  4. Open an individual entry to read the description, model tags, and metadata for that system.

Expected result: you land on a filtered list of systems for that model, then drill into individual entries instead of scanning the whole catalogue.

Choosing which model to start from

  • Structured transactions and SQL → Relational (473 systems), the largest category by a wide margin.
  • Caching, sessions, simple lookups → Key-Value (248).
  • Semi-structured or schema-flexible records → Document / XML (217).
  • Relationship-heavy queries → Graph (91).
  • Embeddings and similarity search → Vector (50).
  • RDF and linked data → Triplestore / RDF (28).
  • Analytical columnar workloads → Column Family / Wide-Column (28).

If your workload spans categories, check whether a candidate system carries multiple model tags before treating it as a single-model fit.

Other ways to move around the site

The homepage also offers:

  • Featured System — a highlighted entry, updated weekly. At the time of writing it is Redshift, an OLAP relational data warehouse from Amazon, listed as proprietary and in use since 2012.
  • The Leaderboards — updated daily, split into Most Recent (newly modified entries such as OrioleDB, Turso, Xodus, voidDB, CnosDB), Most Viewed over the last 30 days (Oracle, Derby, Heroic, DynamoDB, TileDB), and Most Edited over the last 30 days (SereneDB, CloverDB, CnosDB, ConceptBase.cc, Dremio).
  • Curated groupings — for example Apache Foundation databases, databases named "Store", and university database systems such as the Wisconsin Database Systems collection.

Use the leaderboards when you want to see what is active or popular; use Browse by Data Model when you have already decided on a technical category.

Common snags

  • Counts shift. The numbers reflect the catalogue at a given moment and change as entries are added or retagged, so treat them as scale indicators rather than fixed totals.
  • Overlapping tags. Multi-model systems appear in several lists, which can make a category look larger or more crowded than the number of distinct products.
  • Model is not the same as workload fit. A system filed under Relational may still be an OLAP warehouse rather than an OLTP engine, so read the entry before shortlisting.