DBMS > Apache IoTDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. MariaDB

System Properties Comparison Apache IoTDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. MariaDB

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

An IoT native database with high performance for data management and analysis, deployable on the edge and the cloud and integrated with Hadoop, Spark and Flink

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

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

Cloud Firestore is an auto-scaling document database for storing, syncing, and querying data for mobile and web apps. It offers seamless integration with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products.

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

Primary database model

Time Series DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.18
Rank	#173	Overall
	#15	Time Series DBMS

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

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

Score	7.85
Rank	#51	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Website

iotdb.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

github.com/apple/foundationdb

firebase.google.com/products/firestore

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

Technical documentation

iotdb.apache.org/UserGuide/Master/QuickStart/QuickStart.html

firebase.google.com/docs/database

apple.github.io/foundationdb

firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Google

acquired by Google 2014

FoundationDB

Google

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Initial release

2018

2012

2013

2017

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

Current release

1.1.0, April 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

11.3.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

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.

STACKIT MariaDB offers MariaDB in a fully managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

Java

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM (>= 1.8)

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
Native API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Android
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Go
Java
Python
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
Python

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

limited functionality with using 'rules'

in SQL-layer only

yes, Firebase Rules & Cloud Functions

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes, with Cloud Functions

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning (by time range) + vertical partitioning (by deviceId)

Sharding

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication methods; using Raft/IoTConsensus algorithm to ensure strong/eventual data consistency among multiple replicas

yes

Multi-source replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Integration with Hadoop and Spark

Using Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Strong Consistency with Raft

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

yes

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

User concepts

Access control

yes

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management. Security Rules for 3rd party authentication using Firebase Auth.

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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