DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Drizzle vs. Firebird vs. PostgreSQL vs. Stardog

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Drizzle vs. Firebird vs. PostgreSQL vs. Stardog

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Drizzle has published its last release in September 2012. The open-source project is discontinued and Drizzle is excluded from the DB-Engines ranking.

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

MySQL fork with a pluggable micro-kernel and with an emphasis of performance over compatibility.

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

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

Score	0.46
Rank	#260	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#121	Relational DBMS

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	645.54
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	2.02
Rank	#123	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Website

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

www.postgresql.org/docs

docs.stardog.com

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Drizzle project, originally started by Brian Aker

Firebird Foundation

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Stardog-Union

Initial release

2014

2008

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2010

Current release

7.2.4, September 2012

5.0.0, January 2024

16.2, February 2024

7.3.0, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

GNU GPL

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

BSD

commercial

60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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Implementation language

JavaScript

C++

C and C++

Java

Server operating systems

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

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

standard with numerous extensions

Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

JDBC

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Jena RDF API
OWL
RDF4J API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SNARL
SPARQL
Spring Data
Stardog Studio
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

C
C++
Java
PHP

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Triggers

yes

hooks for callbacks inside the server can be used.

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

none

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

yes

only for local storage and DOM-storage

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

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

Pluggable authentication mechanisms

e.g. LDAP, HTTP

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

More information provided by the system vendor

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