DBMS > Couchbase vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. Realm

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A distributed document store with a powerful search engine and in-built operational and analytical capabilities

Cloud Firestore is an auto-scaling document database for storing, syncing, and querying data for mobile and web apps. It offers seamless integration with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products.

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Primary database model

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

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

Score	25.34
Rank	#31	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	10.88
Rank	#47	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	8.33
Rank	#54	Overall
	#10	Document stores

Website

www.couchbase.com

firebase.google.com/products/firestore

realm.io

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

realm.io/docs

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Google

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

2011

2017

2014

Current release

Server: 7.0, July 2021; Mobile: 3, February 2022; Couchbase Capella, October 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2; Commercial licenses also available

commercial

Open Source

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

String, Boolean, Number

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

Declarative query language (N1QL) that extends ANSI SQL to JSON. First commercial implementation of SQL++.

APIs and other access methods

Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs

Android
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
Python

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Functions and timers in JavaScript

yes, Firebase Rules & Cloud Functions

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes, with Cloud Functions

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Using Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management. Security Rules for 3rd party authentication using Firebase Auth.

yes

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