DBMS > Derby vs. Firebird vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Rockset vs. SurrealDB

System Properties Comparison Derby vs. Firebird vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Rockset vs. SurrealDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A scalable, reliable search and analytics service in the cloud, built on RocksDB

A fully ACID transactional, developer-friendly, multi-model DBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS
Search engine

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

Score	4.60
Rank	#70	Overall
	#38	Relational DBMS

Score	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.82
Rank	#212	Overall
	#36	Document stores

Score	1.02
Rank	#190	Overall
	#33	Document stores
	#18	Graph DBMS

Website

db.apache.org/derby

www.firebirdsql.org

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

rockset.com

surrealdb.com

Technical documentation

db.apache.org/derby/manuals/index.html

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

docs.rockset.com

surrealdb.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Firebird Foundation

Microsoft

Rockset

SurrealDB Ltd

Initial release

1997

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1989

2019

2022

Current release

10.17.1.0, November 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

v1.5.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Open Source

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Java

C and C++

C++

Rust

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
Windows

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

dynamic typing

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.

yes

ingestion from XML files supported

Secondary indexes

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Read-only SQL queries, including JOINs

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

HTTP REST

GraphQL
RESTful HTTP API
WebSocket

Supported programming languages

Java

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Deno
Go
JavaScript (Node.js)
Rust

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java Stored Procedures

PSQL

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Automatic sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

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

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and organizations can be defined via Rockset console

yes, based on authentication and database rules

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