DBMS > FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Postgres-XL vs. XTDB

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Postgres-XL vs. XTDB

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

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

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

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

A general purpose database with bitemporal SQL and Datalog and graph queries

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.07
Rank	#188	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#86	Relational DBMS

Score	3.58
Rank	#92	Overall
	#14	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Score	0.52
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	0.09
Rank	#351	Overall
	#47	Document stores

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/bigtable

www.postgres-xl.org

github.com/xtdb/xtdb
www.xtdb.com

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

www.xtdb.com/docs

Developer

FoundationDB

Google

Juxt Ltd.

Initial release

2013

2015

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2019

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

10 R1, October 2018

1.19, September 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Open Source

MIT License

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++

Clojure

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
macOS

All OS with a Java 8 (and higher) VM
Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

yes

yes, extensible-data-notation format

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

limited SQL, making use of Apache Calcite

APIs and other access methods

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

HTTP REST
JDBC

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Clojure
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

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

yes, each node contains all data

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic single-row operations

ACID

MVCC

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, flexibel persistency by using storage technologies like Apache Kafka, RocksDB or LMDB

In-memory capabilities

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

User concepts

Access control

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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More resources

Recent citations in the news

FoundationDB team's new venture, Antithesis, raises $47M to enhance software testing
13 February 2024, SiliconANGLE News

Antithesis raises $47M to launch an automated testing platform for software
13 February 2024, TechCrunch

Deno adds scaleable messaging with new Queues feature, sparks debate about proprietary services • DEVCLASS
28 September 2023, DevClass

IBM Cloudant ends backing of FoundationDB version of CouchDB
15 March 2022, The Register

FoundationDB, a very interesting NoSQL database owned by Apple, is now an open-source project
19 April 2018, GeekWire

provided by Google News

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31 January 2022, InfoQ.com

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