DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Oracle vs. Realm vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Oracle vs. Realm vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Widely used RDBMS

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

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

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

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	1236.29
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.oracle.com/database

realm.io

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.oracle.com/en/database

realm.io/docs

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Oracle

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2013

2012

1980

2014

2019

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

23c, September 2023

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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++

C and C++

Server operating systems

Linux

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

with proprietary extensions

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

limited functionality with using 'rules'

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

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

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

yes

In-Memory realm

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

yes, based on authentication and database rules

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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