DBMS > CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Cloudant vs. KeyDB vs. MySQL

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Cloudant vs. KeyDB vs. MySQL

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.

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

An ultra-fast, open source Key-value store fully compatible with Redis API, modules, and protocols

Widely used open source RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store

Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
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	2.68
Rank	#106	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	0.71
Rank	#226	Overall
	#33	Key-value stores

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Website

couchdb.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

github.com/Snapchat/KeyDB
keydb.dev

www.mysql.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

firebase.google.com/docs/database

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

docs.keydb.dev

dev.mysql.com/doc

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

Google

acquired by Google 2014

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

EQ Alpha Technology Ltd.

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Initial release

2005

2012

2010

2019

1995

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

8.4.0, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

BSD-3

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

Erlang

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

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

by using the Redis Search module

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protoco

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

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

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

limited functionality with using 'rules'

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

Lua

yes

proprietary syntax

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

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source 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

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Strong eventual consistency with CRDTs

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

atomic operations within a document possible

Optimistic locking, atomic execution of commands blocks and scripts

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Optimistic locking

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

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 can be defined per database

simple password-based access control and ACL

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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