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RavenDB

RavenDB

Overview

What is RavenDB?

RavenDB is a NoSQL Document Database that is fully transactional (ACID) across the database and throughout clusters. It is presented as an easy to use all-in-one database that minimizes the need for third party addons, tools, or support to boost…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

RavenDB has gained popularity as an excellent database for security management systems, resulting in increased programmer productivity, …
Continue reading

RavenDB Review

10 out of 10
February 26, 2022
It is a great product, especially can be told as a powerful database, very efficient and easy to use. It is not a SQL-based database. My …
Continue reading

Simply the Best

10 out of 10
August 09, 2021
For me, RavenDB is the best database currently available.

RavenDB is a document database written in C# / .NET (Core) which is also the …
Continue reading

RavenDB wins it all!

10 out of 10
August 04, 2021
My team does the technology R&D for the full firm, and we routinely check out emerging technologies, be it database engines or UI tech. We …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

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  • Data model flexibility (24)
    9.9
    99%
  • Performance (24)
    9.0
    90%
  • Availability (23)
    8.9
    89%
  • Concurrency (23)
    8.0
    80%
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Pricing

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What is RavenDB?

RavenDB is a NoSQL Document Database that is fully transactional (ACID) across the database and throughout clusters. It is presented as an easy to use all-in-one database that…

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://ravendb.net/buy

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  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Demos

The Power of Time Series in RavenDB

YouTube

RavenDB: The Right Data Storage Solution for Today’s Information

YouTube
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Features

NoSQL Databases

NoSQL databases are designed to be used across large distrusted systems. They are notably much more scalable and much faster and handling very large data loads than traditional relational databases.

9.1
Avg 8.8
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Product Details

What is RavenDB?


RavenDB is a NoSQL Document Database that is fully transactional (ACID) across the database and throughout clusters. It is presented as an easy to use all-in-one database that minimizes the need for third party addons, tools, or support to boost developer productivity and get projects into production fast.

Users can setup and secure a data cluster deploy in the cloud, on-premise or in a hybrid environment. RavenDB offers a Database as a Service solution, allowing users to pass on all database operations and focus exclusively on the application. RavenDB has a built-in storage engine that operates at speeds up to 1 million reads per second and 150,000 writes per second on a single node using simple commodity hardware to increase application performance. The vendor states RavenDB has been downloaded over 2 million times serving thousands of customers from Startups to Fortune 100 Large Enterprises.

RavenDB Features include:

  • Query language based on SQL, with Intelligent Coding Assistance in-studio.
  • Works with existing relational databases – ETL feature and migration to Document model available.
  • Multiplatform – C#, Node.js, Java, Python, Ruby, Go
  • Multisystem – Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Docker, Raspberry Pi
  • Works on older machines and smaller devices
  • Built in Full-Text Search, MapReduce, and Storage Engine
  • Schema Free
  • Document Data Compression, TCP Compression
  • Machine Learning Integration
  • DBaaS Solution is HIPPA compliant
  • Concurrent Data Subscriptions
  • Incremental Time Series
  • Elasticsearch ETL
  • Power BI Support
  • Plugins for Grafana for data visualization
  • OLAP ETL – Push your data to data lakes to get business intelligence.
  • Cluster Dashboard – See the real-time status of all the indicators in each node simultaneously.
  • Read-only Certificates – Limit users to seeing data without being able to make changes to it.

RavenDB Features

NoSQL Databases Features

  • Supported: Performance
  • Supported: Availability
  • Supported: Concurrency
  • Supported: Security
  • Supported: Scalability
  • Supported: Data model flexibility
  • Supported: Deployment model flexibility

RavenDB Video

RavenDB: The Right Data Storage Solution for Today’s Information

RavenDB Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

MongoDB, Couchbase Server, and Azure Cosmos DB are common alternatives for RavenDB.

Reviewers rate Data model flexibility highest, with a score of 9.9.

The most common users of RavenDB are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(26)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

RavenDB has gained popularity as an excellent database for security management systems, resulting in increased programmer productivity, satisfaction, and customer happiness. Users have found it easy to configure from C# code, eliminating the impedance mismatch associated with other DBMS. Integration with automated tests using the RavenDB.TestDriver package has made testing on CI pipelines a breeze. The web frontend, RavenStudio, eliminates the need for additional tools like SQL Server Management Studio for quick access to databases. With its free edition offering fewer constraints than competitors and affordable prices for paid licenses, RavenDB proves to be a cost-effective choice. It simplifies the design, implementation, and testing of data access layers, allowing for faster software delivery. In the West African cashew industry, RavenDB is exclusively used for applications such as business plan development, quality analysis of cashew containers, and quality control data collection. Its ACID support and advanced features like a search engine make it a preferred choice over other databases like MongoDB. Additionally, RavenDB serves as a central database and caching server, eliminating the need for custom services by providing built-in features to solve various problems. With its distributed model enabling easy scaling by adding new cluster nodes, RavenDB is flexible for both small apps and large-scale systems. It offers high performance, powerful data storage, ease of use, flexibility, scalability, and resilience—addressing crucial issues for commercial graphics products. Companies managing huge databases find RavenDB efficient with fast response times, efficient mass operations, secure backups, and real-time operations. Its minimal configuration and suitability for serverless applications make it a great choice for those requiring speed, reliability, and flexibility. The time series feature of RavenDB has solved performance struggles when storing millions of records while allowing shared databases and shared history. For an online sports management SaaS platform that handles large amounts of data, RavenDB offers flexibility in scalability and high performance as the sole database solution. Customers like CapGemini have experienced no problems with RavenDB and are using it successfully. Developers working with various programming languages such as C#, Java, and Python express their interest in meeting and discussing RavenDB. Users who previously used SQL Server for data storage have found RavenDB to be a much better alternative with its clean UI and simple yet powerful functionality. Its simple design and meaningful documentation make it easy to get started, while its powerful query language simplifies complex queries. Employees have given positive reviews on using RavenDB as an efficient caching solution and storage hub for company data. In a project with unclear requirements, RavenDB was chosen as the NoSQL solution due to its ACID data integrity and performance optimization through auto-indexing. The product has been suggested for general usage at firms after thorough evaluation and consultation, surpassing other vendor solutions in terms of performance, support, and insights. Users across industries have found RavenDB to be a well-rounded and performant product that is suitable for numerous use cases. From managing huge databases with fast response times, efficient mass operations, secure backups, and real-time operations to serving as a central database and caching server, RavenDB addresses important issues for commercial graphics products, offering high performance, powerful data storage, ease of use, flexibility, scalability, and resilience. Whether it's for security management systems, business plan development in the West African cashew industry, online sports management SaaS platforms, or housing downstream trading data, RavenDB has proven to be an excellent choice. Its user-friendly interface and extensive documentation make it easy for users to get started while its advanced features like ACID support and a search engine offer powerful capabilities to meet diverse needs. With positive reviews from customers like CapGemini and colleagues looking forward to discussions about RavenDB's capabilities, it is clear that this database solution has garnered significant interest and satisfaction among its users.

Excellent Performance: Many users have consistently praised RavenDB for its excellent and optimized performance. They have been impressed with the high level of performance that RavenDB delivers, especially when considering its rare system requirements. Users find that RavenDB consistently meets their expectations for efficient and reliable database operations.

User-Friendly Interface: Reviewers have found RavenDB to have a highly user-friendly interface. The intuitive design makes it easy for users to navigate through the platform and perform various tasks. The visually appealing UI adds to the overall positive experience of using RavenDB, making it a popular choice among users who value simplicity and ease-of-use.

Efficient Configuration: Several users appreciate that configuring RavenDB is a seamless process thanks to its support for C# code integration. This feature allows developers to easily integrate automated tests into their workflow, streamlining the development process. In addition, reviewers specifically highlight how well RavenDB integrates with .NET Core and C#, further enhancing its efficiency as a NoSQL database solution.

Challenging Method Development: Some users have found it challenging to develop methods if they are unfamiliar with the accurate simulation approach. This can lead to a steep learning curve and may require additional training or support resources for new users.

Licensing Limitations: A limitation for some users is that the software does not allow replication or authorized access without acquiring a license. This can be seen as restrictive for those who want to explore or experiment with the software before committing to a full license.

Lack of Enterprise Tracking Records: Concerns are raised by some users about RavenDB due to the lack of evidence of tracking records in enterprise systems. The absence of robust tracking capabilities may hinder certain use cases where comprehensive data auditing and traceability are crucial.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-24 of 24)
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Lucas Recoaro | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use RavenDB as our database in different applications.
I love the fact that RavenDB is very easy to use, lets's think of it as a database as a service, no weird configuration is needed, just a couple of lines of code and ready to start reading and writing your data.
  • Easy installation
  • Easy implementation
  • Good Documentation
Is suitable for almost every project that needs to store data in a database, the downsize is the license so if you are working in a project where it will never have income (a hobby for example) I would recommend a completely free database.
Juliet Gavison | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We build software, back and front, and in my case, I need a small DB for a serverless app that needs to be fast, reliable, and flexible.
  • fast connection and data serving
  • making data readable and understable
  • I think the docs could be improved, and guides added for some main use case (like integration for SPA, serverless, etc.)
  • I believe the studio interface could be simplified
While the learning curve can be kind of steep for people less familiar with general database knowledge, it is a great tool that seems to be customizable for pretty much any need one may have.
February 26, 2022

RavenDB Review

Ayush Dutta | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
It is a great product, especially can be told as a powerful database, very efficient and easy to use. It is not a SQL-based database. My experience while using it was user-friendly and speed works. It helped our team to hold a huge amount of data, which we could do in other software databases. I have used this product, and it's very easy to understand. It is very productive and while I used it, I didn't find any mistakes in it. Well working product.
  • Storage capacity
  • Efficiency
  • Speed work
  • Tools
  • Lags a bit
  • Better GUI
In simple words, I would say then if we want to store a bunch of important data, we would think for having a data manager, and a data manager would think for having a nice, efficient, and powerful database, and the one will always try to use, something which is very productive and professional. These qualities are present in RavenDB. We have not found anything very wrong with this product, very well performed. I know the work efficiency found in this product. No one can find anything not in order. Perfect build, just I think that the GUI could be better. Else, great product.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We were looking for a database solution for our clients, able to: manage huge databases (millions of elements by tables); offer a very fast response time (less than a few milliseconds); offer efficient mass database operations; secure and backup easily all the data we have; able to manage real-time operations; your data your server: on-site database solution;
  • secured by design
  • really fast database response time
  • awesome team support
  • license cost by cpu
We use RavenDB for critical database projects for clients, where we need fast response time in huge database operations, with fewer downtimes as possible. For example, migrating one project that was started on the firebase database. We've reduced by 40 times the cost of infrastructure, and improved by 10x the database response time!
Parthesh Pandya | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
RavenDB is a freely available NoSQL Functional Documentation Database that is completely transactional (ACID) throughout your database and network. RavenDB provides high availability, brilliant performance, low management, and self-optimization for a fraction of the price of a relational model. We've been working on a security management system using RavenDb as the only database. It has offered an excellent application performance, which has resulted in increased programmer production, satisfaction, and entire customer satisfaction.
  • Excellent & optimized performance.
  • RavenDB provides storage as default JSON format.
  • One of the greatest .NET client APIs with scalability, resulting in a shorter experience curve.
  • Very easy to use interface.
  • Developing methods is challenging if developers are unfamiliar with the accurate simulation approach.
  • It does not allow you to replicating, or authorized access without first acquiring a license.
  • The lack of evidence of tracking records in the enterprise systems raises several concerns about RavenDB.
If you're a.NET developer searching for a system other than SQL Server for business assessment, then you must try RavenDB. RavenDB is a fantastic document-oriented system that has been specifically developed to work with all.NET or Windows systems. Developers are continually working on such systems to eliminate their flaws while also providing a few benefits. We must refresh ourselves on a regular basis since the free software system is like an open area where anybody may stand up with a brilliant solution to the issue. RavenDB is absolutely worth a look.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Our company was searching for an efficient caching solution that can also serve as a storage hub for company data and decided a few years ago to experiment with RavenDB. Employees are free to store data at will and use the available technologies for web development purposes. It has been primarily used for cache stacking and session-sharing and thus far has been receiving good reviews among workers.
  • Easy to learn and fully utilize. The tools made available are very simple and system maintenance is largely hands-free
  • Quick memory caching
  • Free of major errors. Any data is immediately stored to the hub
  • Can dual as a channel for stream data
  • Would like to see RavenDB develop a self-monitoring tool for bottlenecks
  • Needs a bigger community around the software. Difficult to find an immediate solution when faced with a new problem
  • Creating and configuring uncommon settings can sometimes be difficult
RavenDB would be an excellent option for any projects requiring cache. It has the capacity to take on a big volume of input at once without any performance issues. If the solutions you are searching for are related to cache or key operations, RavenDB would provide good results.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
After more than 25 years of using a relational SQL database (MS-SQL), we decided to investigate the usage of a NoSQL database and rethink our Dataware house. For a new project, we had the requirement to be flexible in the scalability of the data and to grant high performance (mostly read-only access) for a large amount of data (> 400 Mio Rows). So we started investigating with RavenDb and are really excited.
  • Really simple setup process and great configuration tool.
  • Great implementation in net core / c#.
  • High performance with rare system requirements.
  • Great support team, with really short response times!
  • The product is not as widely used as others.
RavenDB is very well suited for NoSQL beginners to start easily setting up and using a NoSQL database. Also to set up a high performance and high availability cluster is possible without reading tons of documentation. Very straightforward assistant! The performance is really high.
August 09, 2021

Simply the Best

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
For me, RavenDB is the best database currently available.

RavenDB is a document database written in C# / .NET (Core) which is also the technology we use for our backends. It is super easy to configure a RavenDB server / database from C# code. This gives extra compile-time safety compared to other DBMS that use script languages like e.g. SQL. Furthermore, being a document database, I do not have to deal with the Impedance Mismatch that comes with any RDBMS. The entities that I store and load from RavenDB more closely resemble the code that I would actually write as an O-O developer. Nonetheless, I have ACID support in RavenDB, something that is not quite as well implemented in e.g. MongoDB.

RavenDB can be easily integrated in automated tests with their RavenDB.TestDriver package. This makes integration tests on CI pipelines especially easy as we do not have to supply e.g. a Docker image that provides a corresponding database server instance.

With RavenDB, the RavenStudio comes directly as a web frontend with the server. I do not need to install tools like SQL Server Management Studio or SQL Developer to get quick (scripting) access to my RavenDB databases. Furthermore, the free edition of RavenDB has less constraints than competitive projects (e.g. unlimited database size) and even if we need to buy a paid license, the prices are way more acceptable than from other big vendors.

All in all, RavenDB allows us to deliver software faster for our customers by making our data access layers easier to design, implement, and test.
  • Document Database - no Object-Relational Impedance Mismatch
  • ACID support that is optimized for performance
  • Can be easily integrated into automated tests (unit tests)
  • Easily configurable via C# code
  • Comes directly with RavenStudio - no SSMS or SQL Developer required
  • In general low footprint when it comes to memory and disk consumption
  • Useful safety nets for new developers - e.g. by default an exception is thrown when you make too many requests within a session
  • Configuring the JSON Serializer was a little bit hard in one project
  • Creating custom indexes from several documents can sometimes be a bit cumbersome
RavenDB is our default OLTP database for new projects - there have to be specific requirements from our customers to not use it. It is a very versatile tool that we can incorporate in many situations.

Granted, we haven't used RavenDB in projects where we have several hundreds of millions or even billions of documents. However, we never had any issues with the performance so far (and we have databases that gather about a few GBs of data in a few months). It might be that RavenDB is also not the best thing for modeling a data warehouse (OLAP) as it is relatively cumbersome to create custom indexes.
August 04, 2021

RavenDB wins it all!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
My team does the technology R&D for the full firm, and we routinely check out emerging technologies, be it database engines or UI tech. We did examine RavenDB, and after consulting with them, decided to suggest it for general usage at the firm, beating out many other vendor solutions. It solves the same set of problems as others do; however, the performance, the level of support, and the deep insight are unparalleled.
  • Performance
  • Support
  • RCA
  • Analytical tools
By supporting a large number of different scenarios, I cannot really come up with a use case that would not be suitable for RavenDB. It is versatile when it comes to your target operating system, runtime environment, storage facilities, querying language, and much more. Even when it comes to millions of records, RavenDB does provide the performance characteristics you would expect.
Richard Norman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I use RavenDB as a developer and a software architect on pretty much every project that requires data storage. Mostly its consumer-facing applications that require rapid response times [need some work]. It's very quick to develop with and we get awesome read performance from it which is why we use it. It is also easy to maintain.
  • Easy to implement an Event Sourced Architecture
  • Very rapid response times
  • Highly abstract to enable smart design
  • Large scale complex data updates can be painful
  • Finding people who know how to use it and appreciate it
  • Doesn't support direct GraphQL (yet)
[RavenDB can handle] anything abstract. Being able to select an interface or base class from an Index brings a whole new world of flexibility to my designs. Having a spit of CRUD documents and Data Transfer Objects through indexing also makes it very easy to build with, once you get the hang of it. The biggest challenge is getting other developers to understand how it works. It is more complicated than your average SQL solution and does require a smarter developer to use it.
Josh Close | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
RavenDB is being used as a central database for many applications. We also use it as a caching server in some instances. RavenDB has a feature for every need we seem to come across. When a new problem comes up, RavenDB usually will have a built-in feature to solve our problem, and we don't have to write custom services to solve it. It plays a central role in all the applications I work on. Since RavenDB uses a distributed model, we are able to add new cluster nodes and scale out instead of up. This makes it flexible for a small app getting started that can grow into something very large and not have to worry about your database being able to handle the traffic.
  • Speed
  • Features
  • Support
  • The documentation is very good, but it's sometimes hard to find the topic I'm looking for.
  • Updating references is done manually. It would be nice if there was a feature to help with that. I'm not sure that's even possible though.
RavenDB works well in any situation where you'd normally use an OLAP database. It works well as a caching server or key/value store as well. You are able to store whole documents and load them on demand with all the data your aggregate root needs to display. This makes developing with it much easier, too, since you are able to store an object graph instead of breaking everything up into some level of normalization that your database likes. This still allows you to query across documents if needed using custom indexes.

If you need an OLAP database for reports, a traditional SQL database is probably a better fit.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We had a performance struggle to store millions of records including history per day into a relational database. The time series included in RavenDB solved this problem for us. Currently, all the users have their own database and history, now we need to make to switch to a shared history and partially shared database.
  • JSON Format
  • Features offered like time series and revisions
  • Lucene Search
  • Attachments on Documents
  • Documentation REST endpoints
  • Best Practices in most common situations
I think it is suited in almost all scenarios. We have implemented it in eCommerce solutions and other SaaS solutions
Georgios Diamantopoulos | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
RavenDB has been a central component of our application architecture for a long time. More we find it to be the appropriate database of use for numerous use cases and across industries. We believe it to be a well-rounded product that doesn't deliver features that it cannot deliver well, is very performant, and is friendly to projects small or big. Going forward we will do our best to promote it as the excellent software product that it is.
  • Reduces the amount of code you need to achieve common tasks.
  • Protects you against common traps.
  • Provides features to develop mostly anything!
  • Creating awareness around the developer community and establish a partner program.
RavenDB really outshines many competing products in terms of functionality and goes beyond simple document storage. We have found the use of static indexes, incredibly powerful queries, subscriptions, and counters to be features that you can use to build almost anything. Now with the addition of graph queries and time-series, I really struggle to find a use-case where it doesn't make sense. Perhaps for platforms which can experience a huge surge in demand but where planning is not possible.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Well, I am not allowed yet to describe how is my organization using RavenDB. My company {ALTRAN INNOVATION} is still doing the fusion process with CapGemini group, the actual RavenDB customer. So I am looking forward to get trained enough to successfully support the department using RavenDB inside CapGemini, as soon as possible.
After attending a first virtual demo, I believe CapGemini is not having any problems with this powerful noSQL database as RavenDB. I am looking forward to have some meeting soon with the colleagues developing applications (C#, Java, Python, etc.) using RavenDB.
  • It is a fully transactional noSQL database.
  • Execute queries very fast, having a powerful structure of indexes.
  • High level of data compression makes possible a very low space occupation.
  • So far, I don't know any area where RavenDB has room for improvement.
Migration processes from relational databases (MS SQL Server, ORACLE, MySQL, etc.) into noSQL database environments where ACID features are required, for instance, on transaction operations.
In processes where searching information requires fast recovering of data through fast execution of queries.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I own and operate a business that requires a lot of data storage, and previously have been using SQL Server for over 5 years, and I hated it. Then I found RavenDB and it is so much better than SQL server, I don't know how I ever tolerated working with SQL server. Clean UI, picking it up is a very simple, but powerful. RavenDB's simple design and meaningful documentation make it easy to get started, and its powerful query language makes complex queries easy to build.
  • UI Design
  • Easy-to-Follow Documentation
  • Great Support
  • Popup Notifications are a bit excessive at times
RavenDB is a very simple database that is not only easy to learn, but also easy to deploy and use. I would recommend it for just about anyone who can't afford or does not need the overhead of a more traditional SQL Server product. I honestly believe that RavenDB is best MSSQL alternative on the market as far as I can see. I had a lot of problems with it at the beginning, but it was my fault. If you know SQL you can learn RavenDB in a few hours.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We started a project a few years back in which requirements were not clear from the start of the project. So we decided to opt for NoSQL. There we evaluated a few industry-leading NoSQL solutions like RavenDB, MongoDB, RethinkDB, and others. I was on a team that was responsible for evaluating different NoSQL databases. I was very much impressed with RavenDB, as this was the first NoSQL database providing ACID Data Integrity. It supports auto-indexing which makes it performance-optimized.
  • Awesome auto indexing
  • Multi language support
  • Optimized search
  • Good documentation
  • High cost for on-premise
  • Less community
  • Was maturing when we started project.
If you are starting with NoSQL, definitely consider this in your evaluation.
Sina Zaimaran | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
To start being ACID is vital for every Database. RavenDb is also easy to set up with advanced features included like a search engine with outstanding performance. Since Oren's team added graph support it's more delicious. In my country, all of my colleagues know that I insist all the developers leave the old RDBMS and switch to cool ones like RavenDB. Although most of them use MongoDB, which I don't suggest at all. In one sentence: On-premise or on the cloud RavenDb is my first, second, third, and so on choices.
  • Cool clustering with modest features
  • Fabulous auto indexing
  • Great studio and dashboard
  • Detailed documentation
  • Attachments on the document
  • Outstanding revisions
  • Easy ETL
  • Low prices on the clouds
  • Multi model support
  • Advance search
  • Informative webinars
  • High on-premise prices.
  • Not a vast community.
It's suited to all kinds of projects unless it's reporting related, for which you should use ETL of RavenDB as well.
Adam Nemitoff | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use RavenDB for all my projects that require data persistence. Document Store databases solve the problem of programming model/persistence model impedance. RavenDB has an amazing feature set that sets it apart from its competitors. The power and speed provided by its dynamic indexing makes writing complex and performant queries simple. And the focus on security and resiliency inspires tons of confidence. I have used RavenDB since v1 and with every release, it just keeps getting better!
  • The C# client makes using RavenDB feel like a natural part of the C# language.
  • Support is top notch! Even using free support you get speedy replies from engineers responsible for development of the DB engine.
  • The hosted cloud product is reasonably priced and makes it easy to deploy a resilient cluster with automatic backups.
  • I have never encountered any tasks that RavenDB could not handle.
I suppose that if your data is flat and your schema is static, a Relational DB might be better suited.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
RavenDb is used as the sole database for our online sports management SaaS platform.
  • Excellent integration with .NET and Linq
  • Easy to learn
  • Automatic indexes
  • Good performance
  • ACID compliant
  • More examples of best practices in the docs
If you're looking for a NoSQL database, RavenDb is easy to pick up and works great.
Alex Klaus | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
RavenDB is the main database of a SaaS platform that is widely used across the industry in Australia
  • Integration with the .NET infrastructure (LINQ)
  • Rich querying capabilities and flexible indexes
  • Great tech support
  • More examples and good practices
  • Better Azure/AWS/GCP integration (more transparency)
  • Deferred patching of multiple documents when the index is not stale
  • Clusters with >3 nodes when hosting in the cloud
Highly recommended if your back-end is in the .NET.
Wallace Turner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
RavenDB is being used to house downstream trading data from an exchange. The data must be extremely fast to access and highly available (no downtime).
  • Feature rich .NET API.
  • Simple setup for clustering/high availability.
  • Fast document access via auto indexing.
  • Own language for querying (RQL) not usable elsewhere
  • learning curve for stale documents/eventual consistency
RavenDB is useful for providing high availability (HA) which we achieved by clustering across physically different servers.

RavenDB would not be appropriate if you have dynamic queries - e.g. where the fields being queried are not known ahead of time and thus indexes would have to be built on all fields (or dynamically as required).
Alan Doherty | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use RavenDB throughout our platform, from high-frequency server statistics to customer data. Our platform is challenged by the unique requirements of a geographically distributed regions, low tolerance for latency and the need for ACID state machines and transactional operations.
  • Excellent .NET support.
  • Embeddable.
  • Out of the box administration tools.
  • Great documentation.
  • ACID documents.
  • Managed cloud available.
  • Automatic indexes.
  • Open-source.
  • Time series data.
Extremely likely. The solution itself is very easy to setup, supports multiple languages out of the box and provides an easy-to-use administration UI which accelerates development. I have also actively used RavenDB in multiple other projects to a notable increase in productivity and a reduction in the burden of managing application data. The community license is very generous and allowed us to get started quickly without upfront costs and the support was above par.
Jeremy Holt | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use RavenDB exclusively for all our applications. Our applications are developed for the West African cashew industry and include programs to develop business plans for industries seeking finance from financial institutions to easy to use software for our inspectors to perform on the spot quality analysis of containers of cashews prior to shipment. We also develop software to help local laboratories as well as factories perform quality control data collection on the shop floor.
  • Once over the initial learning curve, using Raven requires very little thinking about. Even though it is capable of doing almost anything you can imagine, learning how to LoadAsync, StoreAsync, QueryAsync are pretty much all you need to know to do about 99% of the day to day tasks.
  • Write the POCO for your data - Raven does the rest
  • With v 4.0+ you hardly ever need to write queries - Raven's automatic queries handle about 99% of my requirements
  • In previous versions the documentation was terrible - however, since v4.0 the documentation is excellent.
  • Any minor complaints are generally resolved by the team the same day. I suggested at one time some minor tweaks to Studio (showing the number of items in an array) and they were implemented almost immediately.
  • Nothing really to complain about.
All my applications are basic crud and querying of data. Over the years I have learned (mostly) to model my data to fit the no-SQL paradigm. If you can model the data properly there is no reason not to use Raven. Obviously, if you can't find an appropriate model you should probably look elsewhere.
Without doubt the hardest thing of all using Raven is the modelling - before you give up, look at the lookup features (Load.Include) which effectively allow you to approximate foreign keys. The documentation has an excellent chapter on modelling which is definitely worth reading before one starts with Raven.
July 19, 2020

3M loves RavenDB

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We used RavenDB as the database for several of our commercial graphics products within 3M. It addressed a few important issues for us:
  • High performance
  • Powerful: We were able to store complex objects and view models in Raven.
  • Ease of developer use: No schemas, stored procedures, or complicated mapping to setup.
  • Flexible: Raven let us move quickly while prototyping our apps without getting bogged down in schema details.
  • Scalable and resilient across a cluster of machines.
  • First-class .NET support
  • Easy to get started
  • Great tooling
  • Unparalleled performance
  • Resilient
  • Sharding
Raven is a fantastic choice for a general-purpose database. It works well in a variety of types of applications and has a flexible data model for different kinds of data (JSON, time series, counters). We've successfully used Raven both as a primary database and as a complement to a traditional SQL database. For the latter scenario, we used Raven as a cache for complex objects like view models. But we've found the most success switching entirely off SQL and onto Raven—great performance, fewer maintenance issues, and developers love it.
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