DBMS > Couchbase vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. GridDB vs. PouchDB

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. GridDB vs. PouchDB

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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 distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

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.

Scalable in-memory time series database optimized for IoT and Big Data

JavaScript DBMS with an API inspired by CouchDB

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Time Series DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Key-value store
Relational DBMS

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

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	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	2.09
Rank	#120	Overall
	#10	Time Series DBMS

Score	2.34
Rank	#112	Overall
	#21	Document stores

Website

www.couchbase.com

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

github.com/apple/foundationdb

griddb.net

pouchdb.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

firebase.google.com/docs/database

apple.github.io/foundationdb

docs.griddb.net

pouchdb.com/guides

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Google

acquired by Google 2014

FoundationDB

Toshiba Corporation

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

2011

2012

2013

2012

Current release

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

5.1, August 2022

7.1.1, June 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

AGPL version 3 and Apache License, version 2.0 , commercial license (standard and advanced editions) also available

Open Source

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.

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C++

JavaScript

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

yes

numerical, string, blob, geometry, boolean, timestamp

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

supported in specific SQL layer only

SQL92, SQL-like TQL (Toshiba Query Language)

APIs and other access methods

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

HTTP REST

only for PouchDB Server
JavaScript API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

JavaScript

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

limited functionality with using 'rules'

in SQL-layer only

View functions in JavaScript

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

with a proxy-based framework, named couchdb-lounge

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication

also with CouchDB databases
Source-replica replication

also with CouchDB databases

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Connector for using GridDB as an input source and output destination for Hadoop MapReduce jobs

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Linearizable consistency

Immediate consistency within container, eventual consistency across containers

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

ACID

ACID at container level

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, WebSQL or LevelDB as backend

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

User concepts

Access control

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users can be defined per database

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

GridDB is a highly scalable, in-memory time series database optimized for IoT and...
» more

Competitive advantages

1. Optimized for IoT Equipped with Toshiba's proprietary key-container data model...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Factory IoT, Automative Industry, Energy, BEMS, Smart Community, Monitoring system.
» more

Key customers

Denso International [see use case ] An Electric Power company [see use case ] Ishinomaki...
» more

Market metrics

GitHub trending repository
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open Source license (AGPL v3 & Apache v2) Commercial license (subscription)
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.