DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Realm

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

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.

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Document store

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	74.07
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	2.68
Rank	#106	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

realm.io

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

firebase.google.com/docs/database

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

realm.io/docs

Developer

Amazon

Google

acquired by Google 2014

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

Microsoft

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

2012

2010

1989

2014

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

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

Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

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

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

atomic operations within a document possible

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Optimistic locking

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.

yes

In-Memory realm

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 can be defined per database

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

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.