DBMS > FileMaker vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. PouchDB vs. SQLite vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison FileMaker vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. PouchDB vs. SQLite vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

FileMaker is a cross-platform RDBMS that includes a GUI frontend.

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

JavaScript DBMS with an API inspired by CouchDB

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

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

Score	48.20
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	2.28
Rank	#115	Overall
	#21	Document stores

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

www.claris.com/filemaker

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

pouchdb.com

www.sqlite.org

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

pouchdb.com/guides

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Apache Software Foundation

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

1983

2012

2000

2019

Current release

19.4.1, November 2021

7.1.1, June 2019

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Public Domain

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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

JavaScript

Server operating systems

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

server-less

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

dynamic column types

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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

A http query request can return the data in XML format

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

via plugins

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

HTTP REST

only for PouchDB Server
JavaScript API

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

PHP

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

JavaScript

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

limited functionality with using 'rules'

View functions in JavaScript

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

with a proxy-based framework, named couchdb-lounge

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

Multi-source replication

also with CouchDB databases
Source-replica replication

also with CouchDB databases

none

yes

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, WebSQL or LevelDB as backend

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

simple rights management via user accounts and connection to external directory services

yes, based on authentication and database rules

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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