DBMS > 4D vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. H2 vs. InfinityDB vs. ObjectBox

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. H2 vs. InfinityDB vs. ObjectBox

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

A Java embedded Key-Value Store which extends the Java Map interface

Lightweight, fast on-device database for IoT, Mobile and Embedded devices, persisting and synchronising objects and vectors

Primary database model

Object oriented DBMS
Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	2.47
Rank	#110	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	8.33
Rank	#46	Overall
	#30	Relational DBMS

Score	0.08
Rank	#365	Overall
	#55	Key-value stores

Score	1.29
Rank	#166	Overall
	#5	Object oriented DBMS
	#7	Vector DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.h2database.com

boilerbay.com

github.com/objectbox
objectbox.io

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

firebase.google.com/docs/database

www.h2database.com/html/main.html

boilerbay.com/infinitydb/manual

docs.objectbox.io

Developer

4D, Inc

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Thomas Mueller

Boiler Bay Inc.

ObjectBox Limited

Initial release

1984

2012

2005

2002

2017

Current release

v20, April 2023

2.2.220, July 2023

4.0

4.0 (May 2024)

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

dual-licence (Mozilla public license, Eclipse public license)

commercial

Bindings are released under Apache 2.0

Apache License 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

Java

C and C++

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

Android
Any POSIX system
Docker
iOS
Linux
macOS
QNX
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

nested virtual Java Maps, multi-value, logical â€˜tuple spaceâ€™ runtime Schema upgrade

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

all Java primitives, Date, CLOB, BLOB, huge sparse arrays

yes, plus "flex" map-like types

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

manual creation possible, using inversions based on multi-value capability

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

yes

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

Access via java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentNavigableMap Interface
Proprietary API to InfinityDB ItemSpace (boilerbay.com/docs/ItemSpaceDataStructures.htm)

Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

Java

C
C++
Dart (Flutter)
Go
Java
Kotlin
Python
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

With clustering: 2 database servers on different computers operate on identical copies of a database

none

Data sync between devices allowing occasional connected databases to work completely offline

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency

READ-COMMITTED or SERIALIZED

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

manual creation possible, using inversions based on multi-value capability

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

ACID

Optimistic locking for transactions; no isolation for bulk loads

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

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

Users and groups

yes, based on authentication and database rules

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

News

The on-device Vector Database for Android and Java
29 May 2024

Vector search: making sense of search queries
29 May 2024

Python on-device Vector and Object Database for Local AI
28 May 2024

Evolution of search: traditional vs vector search
23 May 2024

On-device Vector Database for Dart/Flutter
21 May 2024

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

Related products and services

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis are the winners of the March ranking
2 March 2016, Paul Andlinger

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Cloud-based DBMS's popularity grows at high rates
12 December 2019, Paul Andlinger

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Recent citations in the news

Realtime vs Cloud Firestore: Which Firebase Database to go?
8 March 2024, Appinventiv

Atos cybersecurity blog: Misconfigured Firebase: A real-time cyber threat
18 January 2024, Atos

Don't be like these 900+ websites and expose millions of passwords via Firebase
18 March 2024, The Register

Google launches Firebase Genkit, a new open source framework for building AI-powered apps
14 May 2024, TechCrunch

Hundreds of Google Firebase websites might have leaked data online
19 March 2024, TechRadar

provided by Google News

ObjectBox Raises $2M in Funding
4 December 2018, FinSMEs

The Megashift Towards Decentralized Edge Computing
27 August 2021, hackernoon.com

provided by Google News

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