DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Firebird vs. MySQL vs. PostGIS vs. Riak KV

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Firebird vs. MySQL vs. PostGIS vs. Riak KV

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

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

Widely used open source RDBMS

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

Distributed, fault tolerant key-value store

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Spatial DBMS

Key-value store

with links between data sets and object tags for the creation of secondary indexes

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	1061.34
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	21.72
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Score	4.01
Rank	#79	Overall
	#9	Key-value stores

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.firebirdsql.org

www.mysql.com

postgis.net

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

dev.mysql.com/doc

postgis.net/documentation

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/kv/latest

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Firebird Foundation

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

OpenSource, formerly Basho Technologies

Initial release

2012

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1995

2005

2009

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

8.4.0, April 2024

3.4.2, February 2024

3.2.0, December 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

GPL v2.0

Open Source

Apache version 2, commercial enterprise edition

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

C and C++

Erlang

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

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

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

PSQL

yes

proprietary syntax

user defined functions

Erlang

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

based on PostgreSQL

selectable replication factor

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

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

links between data sets can be stored

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

yes

based on PostgreSQL

yes, using Riak Security

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