DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. HarperDB vs. PouchDB vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. HarperDB vs. PouchDB vs. SQLite

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS library

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

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

JavaScript DBMS with an API inspired by CouchDB

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

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	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.60
Rank	#244	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	2.34
Rank	#112	Overall
	#21	Document stores

Score	111.41
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.harperdb.io

pouchdb.com

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.harperdb.io/docs

pouchdb.com/guides

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Google

acquired by Google 2014

HarperDB

Apache Software Foundation

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2014

2012

2017

2012

2000

Current release

3.1, August 2021

7.1.1, June 2019

3.46.0 (23 May 2024), May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

free community edition available

Open Source

Public Domain

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

Node.js

JavaScript

Server operating systems

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

hosted

Linux
OS X

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

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

dynamic schema

schema-free

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL-like data manipulation statements

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

HTTP REST

only for PouchDB Server
JavaScript API

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

JavaScript

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

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

View functions in JavaScript

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

Sharding

with a proxy-based framework, named couchdb-lounge

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

Multi-source replication

also with CouchDB databases
Source-replica replication

also with CouchDB databases

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency

Eventual 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

Atomic execution of specific operations

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

yes, using LMDB

yes

by using IndexedDB, WebSQL or LevelDB as backend

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

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users and roles

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