DBMS > FileMaker vs. Firebird vs. Interbase vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison FileMaker vs. Firebird vs. Interbase vs. Snowflake

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

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

Light-weight proven RDBMS

originally from Borland

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Score	47.91
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	4.08
Rank	#75	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

www.claris.com/filemaker

www.firebirdsql.org

www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

docs.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Firebird Foundation

Embarcadero

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

1983

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1984

2014

Current release

19.4.1, November 2021

5.0.0, January 2024

InterBase 2020, December 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

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 and C++

Server operating systems

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Android
iOS
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

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

A http query request can return the data in XML format

export as XML data possible

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

via plugins

yes

APIs and other access methods

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

PHP

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
Object Pascal
PHP
Ruby

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

PSQL

yes

Interbase procedure and trigger language

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

Source-replica replication

Interbase Change Views

yes

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

yes

Multiversion concurreny control

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

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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