DBMS > Couchbase vs. Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. NCache vs. Oracle Rdb

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. NCache vs. Oracle Rdb

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

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

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Key-value store

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
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

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

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	1.06
Rank	#185	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	0.96
Rank	#195	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Score	1.14
Rank	#178	Overall
	#80	Relational DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

www.firebirdsql.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

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

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

apple.github.io/foundationdb

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/rdb-doc.html

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Firebird Foundation

FoundationDB

Alachisoft

Oracle, originally developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)

Initial release

2011

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2013

2005

1984

Current release

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

5.0.0, January 2024

6.2.28, November 2020

5.3.3, April 2024

7.4.1.1, 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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++

C++

C#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

HP Open VMS

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

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

supported in specific SQL layer only

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

yes

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

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

PSQL

in SQL-layer only

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Notifications

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

none

Sharding

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

yes

yes, with selectable consistency level

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

Linearizable consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

yes, on a single node

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

yes

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

Ephemeral buckets

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

NCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
» more

Competitive advantages

NCache is 100% .NET/ .NET Core based which fully supports ASP.NET Core Sessions ,...
» more

Typical application scenarios

NCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
» more

Key customers

Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
» more

Market metrics

Market Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
» more

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.