DBMS > FileMaker vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. PostGIS vs. SwayDB

System Properties Comparison FileMaker vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. PostGIS vs. SwayDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value store
Wide column store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Spatial DBMS

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	47.91
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	3.15
Rank	#95	Overall
	#14	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	21.72
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

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

Website

www.claris.com/filemaker

cloud.google.com/bigtable

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

postgis.net

swaydb.simer.au

Technical documentation

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

postgis.net/documentation

Developer

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Google

Microsoft

Simer Plaha

Initial release

1983

2015

2014

2005

2018

Current release

19.4.1, November 2021

3.4.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

GPL v2.0

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

Scala

Server operating systems

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

via plugins

SQL-like query language

yes

APIs and other access methods

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Supported programming languages

PHP

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

Java
Kotlin
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

based on PostgreSQL

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

based on PostgreSQL

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomic single-row operations

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

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

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

yes

based on PostgreSQL

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