DBMS > Derby vs. Firebird vs. Postgres-XL vs. PostgreSQL

System Properties Comparison Derby vs. Firebird vs. Postgres-XL vs. PostgreSQL

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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

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

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

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

Score	4.71
Rank	#69	Overall
	#37	Relational DBMS

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	0.49
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	645.54
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

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

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

www.postgresql.org/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Firebird Foundation

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Initial release

1997

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

Current release

10.17.1.0, November 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

10 R1, October 2018

16.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Open Source

BSD

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Java

C and 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

Linux
macOS

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

yes

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

yes

standard with numerous extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

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

Supported programming languages

Java

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Java Stored Procedures

PSQL

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

MVCC

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

More information provided by the system vendor

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Conferences, events and webinars

more DBMS events

Monitoring PostgreSQL with Redgate Monitor
Webinar, 10-11am CT / 4-5pm BST, 22 May 2024

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