DBMS > Apache Derby vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. PostgreSQL vs. SpaceTime

System Properties Comparison Apache Derby vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. PostgreSQL vs. SpaceTime

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

Widely used in-process key-value store

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

SpaceTime is a spatio-temporal DBMS with a focus on performance.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

supports sorted and unsorted key sets
Native XML DBMS

in the Oracle Berkeley DB XML version

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Spatial DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

Relational DBMS

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

Score	3.04
Rank	#85	Overall
	#46	Relational DBMS

Score	1.72
Rank	#131	Overall
	#21	Key-value stores
	#3	Native XML DBMS

Score	674.32
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#385	Overall
	#7	Spatial DBMS

Website

db.apache.org/derby

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/berkeleydb.html

www.postgresql.org

www.mireo.com/spacetime

Technical documentation

db.apache.org/derby/manuals/index.html

docs.oracle.com/cd/E17076_05/html/index.html

www.postgresql.org/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Oracle

originally developed by Sleepycat, which was acquired by Oracle

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Mireo

Initial release

1997

1994

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2020

Current release

10.17.1.0, November 2023

18.1.40, May 2020

16.4, August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

commercial license available

Open Source

BSD

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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Implementation language

Java

C, Java, C++ (depending on the Berkeley DB edition)

C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

AIX
Android
FreeBSD
iOS
Linux
OS X
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

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

only with the Berkeley DB XML edition

yes

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL interfaced based on SQLite is available

yes

standard with numerous extensions

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

Java

.Net

Figaro is a .Net framework assembly that extends Berkeley DB XML into an embeddable database engine for .NET
others

Third-party libraries to manipulate Berkeley DB files are available for many languages
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party binding
Perl
Python
Tcl

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

C#
C++
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java Stored Procedures

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Triggers

yes

only for the SQL API

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Fixed-grid hypercubes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Real-time block device replication (DRBD)

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

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.

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

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