DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. NuoDB vs. Spark SQL

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. NuoDB vs. Spark SQL

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.

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

NuoDB is a webscale distributed database that supports SQL and ACID transactions

Spark SQL is a component on top of 'Spark Core' for structured data processing

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Document store

Relational 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	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	0.89
Rank	#198	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Score	18.96
Rank	#33	Overall
	#20	Relational DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

google.github.io/lovefield

www.3ds.com/nuodb-distributed-sql-database

spark.apache.org/sql

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

firebase.google.com/docs/database

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

doc.nuodb.com

spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html

Developer

Amazon

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

2012

2014

2013

2014

Current release

2.1.12, February 2017

3.5.0 ( 2.13), September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

limited edition free

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

C++

Scala

Server operating systems

hosted

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

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

yes

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

JavaScript

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Java
Python
R
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Java, SQL

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

Using read-only observers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

data is dynamically stored/cached on the nodes where it is read/written

yes, utilizing Spark Core

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

none

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

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

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

ACID

tunable commit protocol

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

yes

Temporary table

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

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

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.