DBMS > FileMaker vs. FoundationDB vs. PostGIS vs. Snowflake vs. SwayDB

System Properties Comparison FileMaker vs. FoundationDB vs. PostGIS vs. Snowflake vs. SwayDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

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

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

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

An embeddable, non-blocking, type-safe key-value store for single or multiple disks and in-memory storage

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

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

Score	47.91
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	1.06
Rank	#185	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	21.72
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	0.04
Rank	#387	Overall
	#61	Key-value stores

Website

www.claris.com/filemaker

github.com/apple/foundationdb

postgis.net

www.snowflake.com

swaydb.simer.au

Technical documentation

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

postgis.net/documentation

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

FoundationDB

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Simer Plaha

Initial release

1983

2013

2005

2014

2018

Current release

19.4.1, November 2021

6.2.28, November 2020

3.4.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL v2.0

commercial

Open Source

GNU Affero GPL V3.0

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++

Scala

Server operating systems

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

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

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

via plugins

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

APIs and other access methods

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

PHP

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Java
Kotlin
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

in SQL-layer only

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

yes

based on PostgreSQL

yes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

yes

based on PostgreSQL

yes

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic execution of operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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

yes

based on PostgreSQL

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

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