DBMS > ClickHouse vs. CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. PouchDB

System Properties Comparison ClickHouse vs. CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. PouchDB

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

A high-performance, column-oriented SQL DBMS for online analytical processing (OLAP) that uses all available system resources to their full potential to process each analytical query as fast as possible. It is available as both an open-source software and a cloud offering.

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.

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

JavaScript DBMS with an API inspired by CouchDB

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Document store

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

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

Score	16.34
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

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	2.28
Rank	#115	Overall
	#21	Document stores

Website

clickhouse.com

couchdb.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

github.com/apple/foundationdb

pouchdb.com

Technical documentation

clickhouse.com/docs

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

firebase.google.com/docs/database

apple.github.io/foundationdb

pouchdb.com/guides

Developer

Clickhouse Inc.

Apache Software Foundation

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

Google

acquired by Google 2014

FoundationDB

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

2016

2005

2012

2013

2012

Current release

v24.3.2.23-lts, April 2024

3.3.3, December 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

7.1.1, June 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

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.

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ClickHouse Cloud: Get the performance you love from open source ClickHouse in a serverless offering that takes care of the details so you can spend more time getting insight out of the fastest database on earth.

Implementation language

C++

Erlang

C++

JavaScript

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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

via views

yes

via views

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

supported in specific SQL layer only

APIs and other access methods

gRPC
HTTP REST
JDBC
MySQL wire protocol
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Proprietary protocol

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

HTTP REST

only for PouchDB Server
JavaScript API

Supported programming languages

3rd party library
C++
Elixir

3rd party library
Go

3rd party library
Java

3rd party library
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party library
Kotlin

3rd party library
Nim

3rd party library
Perl

3rd party library
PHP

3rd party library
Python

3rd party library
R

3rd party library
Ruby

3rd party library
Rust
Scala

3rd party library

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

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

JavaScript

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

View functions in JavaScript

limited functionality with using 'rules'

in SQL-layer only

View functions in JavaScript

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

key based and custom

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Sharding

with a proxy-based framework, named couchdb-lounge

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Asynchronous and synchronous physical replication; geographically distributed replicas; support for object storages.

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Multi-source replication

also with CouchDB databases
Source-replica replication

also with CouchDB databases

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Linearizable consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, WebSQL or LevelDB as backend

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 and roles. Column and row based policies. Quotas and resource limits. Pluggable authentication with LDAP and Kerberos. Password based, X.509 certificate, and SSH key authentication.

Access rights for users can be defined per database

yes, based on authentication and database rules

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