DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. HyperSQL vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. HyperSQL vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

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

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

Multithreaded, transactional RDBMS written in Java

also known as HSQLDB

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Secondary database models

Spatial 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	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

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

Score	3.23
Rank	#93	Overall
	#48	Relational DBMS

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.firebirdsql.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

hsqldb.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

apple.github.io/foundationdb

hsqldb.org/web/hsqlDocsFrame.html

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

Amazon

Firebird Foundation

FoundationDB

Microsoft

Initial release

2012

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2013

2001

2014

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

6.2.28, November 2020

2.7.2, June 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

based on BSD license

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Embedded (into Java applications) and Client-Server operating modes

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

yes

JSON 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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

HTTP API

JDBC via HTTP
JDBC
ODBC

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC
Java

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

in SQL-layer only

Java, SQL

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Source-replica replication

yes

none

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

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

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

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

User concepts

Access control

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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