DBMS > Couchbase vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. MySQL vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. MySQL vs. RDF4J

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

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.

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

Widely used open source RDBMS

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

Primary database model

Document store

Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

RDF 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

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	3.26
Rank	#92	Overall
	#13	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Website

www.couchbase.com

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

cloud.google.com/bigtable

www.mysql.com

rdf4j.org

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

firebase.google.com/docs/database

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

dev.mysql.com/doc

rdf4j.org/documentation

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Initial release

2011

2012

2015

1995

2004

Current release

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

8.4.0, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

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.

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C and C++

Java

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

RDF Schemas

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

with proprietary extensions

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

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

Java
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

proprietary syntax

yes

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

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

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

selectable on a per-operation basis

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

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

ACID

yes

Atomic single-row operations

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

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, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.