DBMS > AlaSQL vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. SQLite vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison AlaSQL vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. SQLite vs. TimescaleDB

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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.

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Time Series 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	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

alasql.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.sqlite.org

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

firebase.google.com/docs/database

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Timescale

Initial release

2014

2012

2000

2017

Current release

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

2.13.0, November 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

Open Source

Public Domain

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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

Server operating systems

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

hosted

server-less

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

dynamic column types

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

JavaScript API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

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

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

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

yes, based on authentication and database rules

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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