DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. PostGIS

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. PostGIS

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Hosted, scalable database service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

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

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

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Key-value store
Wide column store

Spatial DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

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

Score	74.45
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	1.06
Rank	#185	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	3.15
Rank	#95	Overall
	#14	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Score	21.72
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

github.com/apple/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/bigtable

postgis.net

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

firebase.google.com/docs/database

apple.github.io/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

postgis.net/documentation

Developer

Amazon

Google

acquired by Google 2014

FoundationDB

Google

Initial release

2012

2013

2015

2005

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

3.4.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

GPL v2.0

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

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

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

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

in SQL-layer only

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

yes

based on PostgreSQL

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Linearizable consistency

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID across one or more tables within a single AWS account and region

yes

ACID

Atomic single-row operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

yes

based on PostgreSQL

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.