DBMS > Altibase vs. Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. Oracle vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Altibase vs. Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. Oracle vs. VoltDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

An enterprise grade, high-performance RDBMS

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

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

Widely used RDBMS

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

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

Score	1.07
Rank	#186	Overall
	#87	Relational DBMS

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	1236.29
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	1.44
Rank	#158	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

altibase.com

www.firebirdsql.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.oracle.com/database

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

github.com/ALTIBASE/Documents/tree/master/Manuals

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

apple.github.io/foundationdb

docs.oracle.com/en/database

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Altibase

Firebird Foundation

FoundationDB

Oracle

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

1999

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2013

1980

2010

Current release

v7.3, 2023, August 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

6.2.28, November 2020

23c, September 2023

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open source edition discontinued with March 2023

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C++

C and C++

C++

C and C++

Java, C++

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

ANSI SQL-92

yes

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

C
C++
Java

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

stored procedures and stored functions

PSQL

in SQL-layer only

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

Java

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Source-replica replication

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

yes

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Snapshots and command logging

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

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