DBMS > AlaSQL vs. FileMaker vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. PostGIS vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. FileMaker vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. PostGIS vs. SQLite

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

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

Cloud Firestore is an auto-scaling document database for storing, syncing, and querying data for mobile and web apps. It offers seamless integration with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products.

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

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	48.20
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	7.85
Rank	#51	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	22.69
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

www.claris.com/filemaker

firebase.google.com/products/firestore

postgis.net

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

postgis.net/documentation

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Google

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2014

1983

2017

2005

2000

Current release

19.4.1, November 2021

3.4.2, February 2024

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

Open Source

GPL v2.0

Open Source

Public Domain

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

JavaScript

Server operating systems

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

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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

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-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

Android
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

PHP

Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
Python

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

yes, Firebase Rules & Cloud Functions

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

yes, with Cloud Functions

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

yes

based on PostgreSQL

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

Multi-source replication

yes

based on PostgreSQL

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Using Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Immediate Consistency

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

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

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

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

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management. Security Rules for 3rd party authentication using Firebase Auth.

yes

based on PostgreSQL

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