DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Postgres-XL vs. QuestDB vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Postgres-XL vs. QuestDB 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.

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.49
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	2.52
Rank	#109	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

alasql.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.postgres-xl.org

questdb.io

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

firebase.google.com/docs/database

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

questdb.io/docs

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Google

acquired by Google 2014

QuestDB Technology Inc

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2014

2012

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2014

2000

Current release

10 R1, October 2018

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

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

hosted

Linux
macOS

Linux
macOS
Windows

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

SQL with time-series extensions

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

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'

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

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

MVCC

ACID for single-table writes

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

through memory mapped files

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

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