DBMS > Apache Phoenix vs. CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

System Properties Comparison Apache Phoenix vs. CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A scale-out RDBMS with evolutionary schema built on Apache HBase

A native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

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

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.

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.97
Rank	#126	Overall
	#59	Relational DBMS

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Website

phoenix.apache.org

couchdb.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

Technical documentation

phoenix.apache.org

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

firebase.google.com/docs/database

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

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

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Microsoft

Initial release

2014

2005

2012

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2010

Current release

5.0-HBase2, July 2018 and 4.15-HBase1, December 2019

3.3.3, December 2023

11.3.2, February 2024

V12

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

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.

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

Implementation language

Java

Erlang

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Unix
Windows

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

late-bound, schema-on-read capabilities

schema-free

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Go
Groovy
Java
PHP
Python
Scala

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

View functions in JavaScript

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

Transact SQL

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, with always 3 replicas available

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Hadoop integration

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

atomic operations within a single document possible

yes

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

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

Access Control Lists (using HBase ACL) for RBAC, integration with Apache Ranger for RBAC & ABAC, multi-tenancy

Access rights for users can be defined per database

yes, based on authentication and database rules

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

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
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Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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