DBMS > CockroachDB vs. Couchbase vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. IRONdb vs. NuoDB

System Properties Comparison CockroachDB vs. Couchbase vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. IRONdb vs. NuoDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

IRONdb seems to be discontinued. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines Ranking.

Description

CockroachDB is a distributed database architected for modern cloud applications. It is wire compatible with PostgreSQL and backed by a Key-Value Store, which is either RocksDB or a purpose-built derivative, called Pebble.

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

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

A distributed Time Series DBMS with a focus on scalability, fault tolerance and operational simplicity

NuoDB is a webscale distributed database that supports SQL and ACID transactions

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

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

Score	6.15
Rank	#55	Overall
	#33	Relational DBMS

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.89
Rank	#198	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Website

www.cockroachlabs.com

www.couchbase.com

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.circonus.com/solutions/time-series-database/

www.3ds.com/nuodb-distributed-sql-database

Technical documentation

www.cockroachlabs.com/docs

docs.couchbase.com

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.circonus.com/irondb/category/getting-started

doc.nuodb.com

Developer

Cockroach Labs

Couchbase, Inc.

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Circonus LLC.

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

Initial release

2015

2011

2012

2017

2013

Current release

23.1.1, May 2023

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

V0.10.20, January 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0, commercial license available

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

commercial

limited edition free

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.

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

dynamic schema

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

text, numeric, histograms

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes, wire compatible with PostgreSQL

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

SQL-like query language (Circonus Analytics Query Language: CAQL)

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes, in Lua

Java, SQL

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

all tables are translated to an ordered KV store and then broken down into 64MB ranges, which are then used as replicas in RAFT

Automatic Sharding

Automatic, metric affinity per node

data is dynamically stored/cached on the nodes where it is read/written

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication using RAFT

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

configurable replication factor, datacenter aware

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

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
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate consistency per node, eventual consistency across nodes

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

ACID

tunable commit protocol

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

Temporary table

User concepts

Access control

Role-based access control

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.