DBMS > Apache Phoenix vs. Firebird vs. PostgreSQL vs. SAP HANA vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison Apache Phoenix vs. Firebird vs. PostgreSQL vs. SAP HANA vs. TimesTen

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

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

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

In-memory, column based data store. Available as appliance or cloud service

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

Document store
Graph DBMS

with SAP Hana, Enterprise Edition
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.97
Rank	#126	Overall
	#59	Relational DBMS

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	645.54
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	44.69
Rank	#22	Overall
	#16	Relational DBMS

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Website

phoenix.apache.org

www.firebirdsql.org

www.postgresql.org

www.sap.com/products/hana.html

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

Technical documentation

phoenix.apache.org

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

www.postgresql.org/docs

help.sap.com/hana

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Firebird Foundation

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

SAP

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

2014

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2010

1998

Current release

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

5.0.0, January 2024

16.3, May 2024

2.0 SPS07 (April 4, 2023), April 2023

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

BSD

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

also available as a cloud based service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Java

C and C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Unix
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Appliance or cloud-service

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

yes

late-bound, schema-on-read capabilities

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard with numerous extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

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

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

PSQL

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

SQLScript, R

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

yes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

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