DBMS > CockroachDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. PostgreSQL

System Properties Comparison CockroachDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. PostgreSQL

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

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.

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

Widely used open source RDBMS

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

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

Score	3.90
Rank	#68	Overall
	#36	Relational DBMS

Score	13.43
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	674.32
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Website

www.cockroachlabs.com

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.postgresql.org

Technical documentation

www.cockroachlabs.com/docs

firebase.google.com/docs/database

www.postgresql.org/docs

Developer

Cockroach Labs

Google

acquired by Google 2014

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Initial release

2015

2012

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

Current release

24.1.0, May 2024

16.4, August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0, commercial license available

commercial

Open Source

BSD

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

Server operating systems

Linux
macOS
Windows

hosted

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

Data scheme

dynamic schema

schema-free

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, wire compatible with PostgreSQL

yes

standard with numerous extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

Supported programming languages

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

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

user defined functions

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

Triggers

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

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication using RAFT

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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.

User concepts

Access control

Role-based access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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