DBMS > CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. MariaDB vs. Percona Server for MongoDB

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. MariaDB vs. Percona Server for MongoDB

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

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.

A drop-in replacement for MongoDB Community Edition with enterprise-grade features.

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	8.30
Rank	#47	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	1.06
Rank	#185	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	91.04
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	0.60
Rank	#246	Overall
	#39	Document stores

Website

couchdb.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

github.com/apple/foundationdb

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

www.percona.com/mongodb/software/percona-server-for-mongodb

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

firebase.google.com/docs/database

apple.github.io/foundationdb

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

docs.percona.com/percona-distribution-for-mongodb

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

Google

acquired by Google 2014

FoundationDB

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

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Percona

Initial release

2005

2012

2013

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2015

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

11.3.2, February 2024

3.4.10-2.10, November 2017

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

Open Source

GPL Version 2

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

Erlang

C++

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

proprietary protocol using JSON

Supported programming languages

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

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

Actionscript
C
C#
C++
Clojure
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Smalltalk

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

limited functionality with using 'rules'

in SQL-layer only

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

JavaScript

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

Sharding

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

yes

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

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

yes

via In-Memory Engine

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per database

yes, based on authentication and database rules

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

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

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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