DBMS > CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. HarperDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. HarperDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

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.

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.55
Rank	#248	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Website

couchdb.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.harperdb.io

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.harperdb.io/docs

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

Google

acquired by Google 2014

HarperDB

Microsoft

Initial release

2005

2012

2017

1989

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

3.1, August 2021

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

free community edition available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

Erlang

Node.js

C++

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

dynamic schema

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

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

SQL-like data manipulation statements

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

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#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

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

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

yes

Atomic execution of specific operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

yes

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 can be defined per database

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users and roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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