DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Oracle Berkeley DB

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Oracle Berkeley 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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

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

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Widely used in-process key-value store

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

supports sorted and unsorted key sets
Native XML DBMS

in the Oracle Berkeley DB XML version

Secondary database models

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.21
Rank	#117	Overall
	#20	Key-value stores
	#3	Native XML DBMS

Website

impala.apache.org

www.firebirdsql.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

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

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

apple.github.io/foundationdb

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

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

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

Firebird Foundation

FoundationDB

Microsoft

Oracle

originally developed by Sleepycat, which was acquired by Oracle

Initial release

2013

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2013

1989

1994

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

5.0.0, January 2024

6.2.28, November 2020

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

18.1.40, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

commercial license available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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Implementation language

C++

C and C++

C++

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

Server operating systems

Linux

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

AIX
Android
FreeBSD
iOS
Linux
OS X
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

Data scheme

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

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

SQL interfaced based on SQLite is available

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

.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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

PSQL

in SQL-layer only

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Triggers

yes

only for the SQL API

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Source-replica replication

yes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Linearizable consistency

Immediate 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

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, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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