DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Firebird vs. PostgreSQL vs. Snowflake vs. Solr

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Firebird vs. PostgreSQL vs. Snowflake vs. Solr

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

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

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

A widely used distributed, scalable search engine based on Apache Lucene

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	645.54
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	42.91
Rank	#24	Overall
	#3	Search engines

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

www.postgresql.org/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

solr.apache.org/resources.html

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Firebird Foundation

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

2012

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2014

2006

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

16.2, February 2024

9.6.0, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

BSD

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2

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.

Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools.

Implementation language

C and C++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

runs as a servlet in servlet container (e.g. Tomcat, Jetty is included)

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

yes

Dynamic Fields enables on-the-fly addition of new fields

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

supports customizable data types and automatic typing

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard with numerous extensions

yes

Solr Parallel SQL Interface

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
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
Erlang
Java
JavaScript
any language that supports sockets and either XML or JSON
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

PSQL

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

user defined functions

Java plugins

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes

User configurable commands triggered on index changes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

yes

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

spark-solr: github.com/lucidworks/spark-solr and streaming expressions to reduce

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

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

optimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

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