DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. FileMaker vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Oracle Berkeley DB

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. FileMaker vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Oracle Berkeley DB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

Hosted, scalable database service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

FileMaker is a cross-platform RDBMS that includes a GUI frontend.

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

Widely used in-process key-value store

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Document store

Key-value store

supports sorted and unsorted key sets
Native XML DBMS

in the Oracle Berkeley DB XML version

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

Score	0.51
Rank	#256	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#118	Relational DBMS

Score	74.45
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	47.91
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	2.01
Rank	#126	Overall
	#21	Key-value stores
	#3	Native XML DBMS

Website

alasql.org

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.claris.com/filemaker

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/berkeleydb.html

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.oracle.com/cd/E17076_05/html/index.html

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Amazon

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Oracle

originally developed by Sleepycat, which was acquired by Oracle

Initial release

2014

2012

1983

2012

1994

Current release

19.4.1, November 2021

18.1.40, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

Open Source

commercial license available

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

JavaScript

C, Java, C++ (depending on the Berkeley DB edition)

Server operating systems

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

hosted

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

AIX
Android
FreeBSD
iOS
Linux
OS X
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

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

A http query request can return the data in XML format

yes

only with the Berkeley DB XML edition

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to SQL99, but no user access control, stored procedures and host language bindings.

yes

via plugins

yes

SQL interfaced based on SQLite is available

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

RESTful HTTP API

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

PHP

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net

Figaro is a .Net framework assembly that extends Berkeley DB XML into an embeddable database engine for .NET
others

Third-party libraries to manipulate Berkeley DB files are available for many languages
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party binding
Perl
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

only for the SQL API

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

only for local storage and DOM-storage

ACID

ACID across one or more tables within a single AWS account and region

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

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

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

simple rights management via user accounts and connection to external directory services

yes, based on authentication and database rules

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