DBMS > Couchbase vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Db2 vs. Linter vs. Lovefield

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Db2 vs. Linter vs. Lovefield

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.

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

RDBMS for high security requirements

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

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
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

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	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	0.09
Rank	#346	Overall
	#152	Relational DBMS

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.ibm.com/products/db2

linter.ru

google.github.io/lovefield

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

firebase.google.com/docs/database

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Google

acquired by Google 2014

IBM

relex.ru

Google

Initial release

2011

2012

1983

host version

1990

2014

Current release

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

12.1, October 2016

2.1.12, February 2017

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

commercial

free version is available

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C and C++

JavaScript

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

AIX
Android
BSD
HP Open VMS
iOS
Linux
OS X
VxWorks
Windows

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

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

ADO.NET
JDBC
LINQ
ODBC
OLE DB
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

C
C#
C++
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Qt
Ruby
Tcl

JavaScript

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

proprietary syntax with the possibility to convert from PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Using read-only observers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

using MemoryDB

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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