DBMS > Apache IoTDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. QuestDB vs. Redis vs. RethinkDB

System Properties Comparison Apache IoTDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. QuestDB vs. Redis vs. RethinkDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

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.

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.

Primary database model

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Document store

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

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	2.52
Rank	#109	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Score	157.80
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Score	2.74
Rank	#105	Overall
	#19	Document stores

Website

iotdb.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

questdb.io

redis.com
redis.io

rethinkdb.com

Technical documentation

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

firebase.google.com/docs/database

questdb.io/docs

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

rethinkdb.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Google

acquired by Google 2014

QuestDB Technology Inc

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

Initial release

2018

2012

2014

2009

Current release

1.1.0, April 2023

7.2.4, January 2024

2.4.1, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

Open Source

Apache Version 2

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.

Aiven for Redis: Fully managed in-memory key-value store for all your caching and speedy lookup needs.

Implementation language

Java

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM (>= 1.8)

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

yes

string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry

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

with RediSearch module

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

SQL with time-series extensions

with RediSQL module

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
Native API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Go
Java
Python
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

community-supported driver
C#

community-supported driver
C++

community-supported driver
Clojure

community-supported driver
Dart

community-supported driver
Erlang

community-supported driver
Go

community-supported driver
Haskell

community-supported driver
Java

official driver
JavaScript (Node.js)

official driver
Lisp

community-supported driver
Lua

community-supported driver
Objective-C

community-supported driver
Perl

community-supported driver
PHP

community-supported driver
Python

official driver
Ruby

official driver
Scala

community-supported driver

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

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

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

Sharding

range based

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

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Integration with Hadoop and Spark

through RedisGears

yes

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

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID for single-table writes

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

Atomic single-document operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

yes

MVCC based

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

through memory mapped files

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

yes

users and table-level permissions

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

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