DBMS > Apache Drill vs. Firebird vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Heroic vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

System Properties Comparison Apache Drill vs. Firebird vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Heroic vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Schema-free SQL Query Engine for Hadoop, NoSQL and Cloud Storage

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

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

Time Series DBMS built at Spotify based on Cassandra or Google Cloud Bigtable, and ElasticSearch

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Key-value store
Wide column store

Time Series 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	1.95
Rank	#127	Overall
	#23	Document stores
	#60	Relational DBMS

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	3.26
Rank	#92	Overall
	#13	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Score	0.51
Rank	#255	Overall
	#21	Time Series DBMS

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Website

drill.apache.org

www.firebirdsql.org

cloud.google.com/bigtable

github.com/spotify/heroic

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

Technical documentation

drill.apache.org/docs

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

spotify.github.io/heroic

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Firebird Foundation

Google

Spotify

Microsoft

Initial release

2012

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2015

2014

Current release

1.20.3, January 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

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 and C++

Java

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

via Elasticsearch

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL SELECT statement is SQL:2003 compliant

yes

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

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

HQL (Heroic Query Language, a JSON-based language)
HTTP API

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

Supported programming languages

C++

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

PSQL

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

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

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

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

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic single-row operations

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

Depending on the underlying data source

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

Depending on the underlying data source

User concepts

Access control

Depending on the underlying data source

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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