DBMS > Drizzle vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. RethinkDB

System Properties Comparison Drizzle vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. RethinkDB

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Drizzle has published its last release in September 2012. The open-source project is discontinued and Drizzle is excluded from the DB-Engines ranking.

Description

MySQL fork with a pluggable micro-kernel and with an emphasis of performance over compatibility.

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	13.43
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	2.30
Rank	#105	Overall
	#19	Document stores

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

rethinkdb.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

rethinkdb.com/docs

Developer

Drizzle project, originally started by Brian Aker

Google

acquired by Google 2014

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

Initial release

2008

2012

2009

Current release

7.2.4, September 2012

2.4.1, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GNU GPL

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

C
C++
Java
PHP

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Triggers

hooks for callbacks inside the server can be used.

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

range based

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

Atomic single-document operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC based

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.

User concepts

Access control

Pluggable authentication mechanisms

e.g. LDAP, HTTP

yes, based on authentication and database rules

yes

users and table-level permissions

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

Related products and services

We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

MySQL won the April ranking; did its forks follow?
1 April 2015, Paul Andlinger

Has MySQL finally lost its mojo?
1 July 2013, Matthias Gelbmann

show all

Cloud-based DBMS's popularity grows at high rates
12 December 2019, Paul Andlinger

show all

Meet some database management systems you are likely to hear more about in the future
4 August 2014, Paul Andlinger

show all

Recent citations in the news

Supabase reels in $200M for its open-source relational database
22 April 2025, SiliconANGLE

Supabase vs. Firebase: Which BaaS is Best for Your App?
14 August 2024, Netguru

Instant harkens back to a pre-Google Firebase
2 October 2024, TechCrunch

Inside FireScam : An Information Stealer with Spyware Capabilities
30 December 2024, cyfirma

Meditation app ‘7 Minute Chi’ exposes over 100,000 user records due to Firebase misconfiguration
2 May 2025, teiss

provided by Google News

How to Use RethinkDB with Node.js Applications
7 November 2024, SitePoint

An introduction to building realtime apps with RethinkDB
4 June 2015, devmio

Stripe acquires team behind NoSQL database startup RethinkDB
5 October 2016, VentureBeat

RethinkDB is dead, and MongoDB isn’t what killed it
24 January 2017, TechRepublic

Open Source Software Is Big Business With Big Funding
17 April 2017, Crunchbase News

provided by Google News

Share this page