DBMS > Elasticsearch vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. PostgreSQL vs. Solr vs. Sphinx
System Properties Comparison Elasticsearch vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. PostgreSQL vs. Solr vs. Sphinx
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| Name | Elasticsearch Xexclude from comparison | Firebase Realtime Database Xexclude from comparison | PostgreSQL Xexclude from comparison | Solr Xexclude from comparison | Sphinx Xexclude from comparison | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Description | A distributed, RESTful modern search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene  Elasticsearch lets you perform and combine many types of searches such as structured, unstructured, geo, and metric | Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data. | Widely used open source RDBMS Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL | A widely used distributed, scalable search engine based on Apache Lucene | Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Primary database model | Search engine | Document store | Relational DBMS with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module. | Search engine | Search engine | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary database models | Document store Spatial DBMS Vector DBMS | Document store Graph DBMS with Apache AgeSpatial DBMS Vector DBMS with pgvector extension | Spatial DBMS | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Website | www.elastic.co/elasticsearch | firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database | www.postgresql.org | solr.apache.org | sphinxsearch.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technical documentation | www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index.html | firebase.google.com/docs/database | www.postgresql.org/docs | solr.apache.org/resources.html | sphinxsearch.com/docs | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Developer | Elastic | Google acquired by Google 2014 | PostgreSQL Global Development Group www.postgresql.org/developer | Apache Software Foundation | Sphinx Technologies Inc. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Initial release | 2010 | 2012 | 1989 1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL | 2006 | 2001 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Current release | 8.6, January 2023 | 16.3, May 2024 | 9.6.1, May 2024 | 3.5.1, February 2023 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| License Commercial or Open Source | Open Source Elastic License | commercial | Open Source BSD | Open Source Apache Version 2 | Open Source GPL version 2, commercial licence available | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cloud-based only Only available as a cloud service | no | yes | no | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Implementation language | Java | C | Java | C++ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server operating systems | All OS with a Java VM | hosted | FreeBSD HP-UX Linux NetBSD OpenBSD OS X Solaris Unix Windows | All OS with a Java VM runs as a servlet in servlet container (e.g. Tomcat, Jetty is included) | FreeBSD Linux NetBSD OS X Solaris Windows | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data scheme | schema-free Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent | schema-free | yes | yes Dynamic Fields enables on-the-fly addition of new fields | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Typing predefined data types such as float or date | yes | yes | yes | yes supports customizable data types and automatic typing | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 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. | no | no | yes specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality. | yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Secondary indexes | yes All search fields are automatically indexed | yes | yes | yes All search fields are automatically indexed | yes full-text index on all search fields | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SQL Support of SQL | SQL-like query language | no | yes standard with numerous extensions | Solr Parallel SQL Interface | SQL-like query language (SphinxQL) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| APIs and other access methods | Java API RESTful HTTP/JSON API | Android iOS JavaScript API RESTful HTTP API | ADO.NET JDBC native C library ODBC streaming API for large objects | Java API RESTful HTTP/JSON API | Proprietary protocol | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Supported programming languages | .Net Groovy Community Contributed Clients Java JavaScript Perl PHP Python Ruby | Java JavaScript Objective-C | .Net C C++ Delphi Java JDBCJavaScript (Node.js) Perl PHP Python Tcl | .Net Erlang Java JavaScript any language that supports sockets and either XML or JSON Perl PHP Python Ruby Scala | C++ unofficial client library Java Perl unofficial client libraryPHP Python Ruby unofficial client library | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server-side scripts Stored procedures | yes | limited functionality with using 'rules' | user defined functions realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc. | Java plugins | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Triggers | yes by using the 'percolation' feature | Callbacks are triggered when data changes | yes | yes User configurable commands triggered on index changes | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Partitioning methods Methods for storing different data on different nodes | Sharding | partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash | Sharding | Sharding Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Replication methods Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes | yes | Source-replica replication other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions | yes | none | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MapReduce Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods | ES-Hadoop Connector | no | no | spark-solr: github.com/lucidworks/spark-solr and streaming expressions to reduce | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Consistency concepts Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system | Eventual Consistency Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all | Eventual Consistency if the client is offline Immediate Consistency if the client is online | Immediate Consistency | Eventual Consistency | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Foreign keys Referential integrity | no | no | yes | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Transaction concepts Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data | no | yes | ACID | optimistic locking | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Concurrency Support for concurrent manipulation of data | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Durability Support for making data persistent | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In-memory capabilities Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only. | Memcached and Redis integration | no | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| User concepts Access control | yes, based on authentication and database rules | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | yes | no | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Elasticsearch | Firebase Realtime Database | PostgreSQL | Solr | Sphinx | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| DB-Engines blog posts | PostgreSQL is the DBMS of the Year 2017 Elasticsearch moved into the top 10 most popular database management systems MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis are the winners of the March ranking | Cloud-based DBMS's popularity grows at high rates | PostgreSQL is the DBMS of the Year 2023 Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2022, defending the title from last year Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2021 | Elasticsearch replaced Solr as the most popular search engine Enterprise Search Engines almost double their popularity in the last 12 months The DB-Engines ranking includes now search engines | The DB-Engines ranking includes now search engines 8 Powerful Alternatives to Elasticsearch Splunk vs Elasticsearch | A Comparison and How to Choose Introducing Elasticsearch Vector Database to Azure OpenAI Service On Your Data (Preview) Elasticsearch Open Inference API Now Supports Microsoft Azure AI Studio Netflix Uses Elasticsearch Percolate Queries to Implement Reverse Searches Efficiently provided by Google News Realtime vs Cloud Firestore: Which Firebase Database to go? Atos cybersecurity blog: Misconfigured Firebase: A real-time cyber threat Don't be like these 900+ websites and expose millions of passwords via Firebase Google Firebase may have exposed 125M records from misconfigurations Hundreds of Google Firebase websites might have leaked data online provided by Google News What Microsoft's Open Source PostgreSQL Acquisition Portends for SQL Server How to implement a better like, views, comment counters in PostgreSQL? Automatically Generate Types for Your PostgreSQL Database Enterprise DB begins rolling AI features into PostgreSQL Oracle Introduces PostgreSQL Running Native on OCI provided by Google News Solr Network Launches Groundbreaking Solana Token Creator SOLR-led walkout demands better conditions for Compass workers (SOLR) Proactive Strategies Have Insiders Been Buying Solar Alliance Energy Inc. (CVE:SOLR) Shares? Solana Token Creator by Solr Network Becomes the Fastest-Growing Platform on Solana provided by Google News Switching From Sphinx to MkDocs Documentation — What Did I Gain and Lose Manticore is a Faster Alternative to Elasticsearch in C++ Perplexity AI: From Its Use To Operation, Everything You Need To Know About Google's Newest Challenger The Pirate Bay was recently down for over a week due to a DDoS attack Beyond the Concert Hall: 5 Organizations Making a Difference in Classical Music in 2018 | WQXR Editorial provided by Google News | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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