DBMS > Datomic vs. EXASOL vs. Firebird vs. Redis vs. RethinkDB

System Properties Comparison Datomic vs. EXASOL vs. Firebird vs. Redis vs. RethinkDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Datomic builds on immutable values, supports point-in-time queries and uses 3rd party systems for durability

High-performance, in-memory, MPP database specifically designed for in-memory analytics.

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

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.59
Rank	#150	Overall
	#69	Relational DBMS

Score	1.99
Rank	#124	Overall
	#58	Relational DBMS

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	157.80
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Score	2.74
Rank	#105	Overall
	#19	Document stores

Website

Technical documentation

docs.datomic.com

www.exasol.com/resources

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

rethinkdb.com/docs

Developer

Cognitect

Exasol

Firebird Foundation

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

Initial release

2012

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2009

Current release

1.0.6735, June 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

7.2.4, January 2024

2.4.1, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

Open Source

Apache Version 2

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.

Aiven for Redis: Fully managed in-memory key-value store for all your caching and speedy lookup needs.

Implementation language

Java, Clojure

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

yes

string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry

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

with RediSearch module

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with RediSQL module

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

.Net
JDBC
ODBC
WebSocket

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

Supported programming languages

Clojure
Java

Java
Lua
Python
R

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

community-supported driver
C#

community-supported driver
C++

community-supported driver
Clojure

community-supported driver
Dart

community-supported driver
Erlang

community-supported driver
Go

community-supported driver
Haskell

community-supported driver
Java

official driver
JavaScript (Node.js)

official driver
Lisp

community-supported driver
Lua

community-supported driver
Objective-C

community-supported driver
Perl

community-supported driver
PHP

community-supported driver
Python

official driver
Ruby

official driver
Scala

community-supported driver

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

user defined functions

PSQL

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

Triggers

By using transaction functions

yes

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Sharding

none

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

Sharding

range based

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Hadoop integration

through RedisGears

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

Atomic single-document operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

yes

MVCC based

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using external storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Couchbase and others)

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

recommended only for testing and development

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

yes

users and table-level permissions

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