DBMS > CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. MySQL vs. RethinkDB

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. MySQL vs. RethinkDB

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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.

Widely used open source RDBMS

DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Document store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	10.26
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	15.00
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	1087.72
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	2.84
Rank	#106	Overall
	#19	Document stores

Website

couchdb.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.mysql.com

rethinkdb.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

firebase.google.com/docs/database

dev.mysql.com/doc

rethinkdb.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

Initial release

2005

2012

1995

2009

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

8.3.0, January 2024

2.4.1, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

Erlang

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry

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

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

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

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

community-supported driver
C#

community-supported driver
C++

community-supported driver
Clojure

community-supported driver
Dart

community-supported driver
Erlang

community-supported driver
Go

community-supported driver
Haskell

community-supported driver
Java

official driver
JavaScript (Node.js)

official driver
Lisp

community-supported driver
Lua

community-supported driver
Objective-C

community-supported driver
Perl

community-supported driver
PHP

community-supported driver
Python

official driver
Ruby

official driver
Scala

community-supported driver

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Sharding

range based

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

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

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Atomic single-document operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

MVCC based

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per database

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

yes

users and table-level permissions

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