DBMS > CouchDB vs. Firebird vs. PostgreSQL vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. Firebird vs. PostgreSQL vs. TimesTen

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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.

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

Widely used open source RDBMS

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

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

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	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	645.54
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Website

couchdb.apache.org

www.firebirdsql.org

www.postgresql.org

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

www.postgresql.org/docs

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

Firebird Foundation

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

2005

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

1998

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

16.3, May 2024

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

BSD

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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Implementation language

Erlang

C and C++

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

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

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

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

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard with numerous extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

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

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

PSQL

user defined functions

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

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

none

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

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

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

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

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