DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. H2 vs. Informix vs. PostgreSQL
System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. H2 vs. Informix vs. PostgreSQL
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Name | Firebase Realtime Database Xexclude from comparison | FoundationDB Xexclude from comparison | H2 Xexclude from comparison | Informix Xexclude from comparison | PostgreSQL Xexclude from comparison | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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 | Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data. | Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers. | Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server. | A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data | Widely used open source RDBMS Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Primary database model | Document store | Document store supported via specific layer Key-value store Relational DBMS supported via specific SQL-layer | Relational DBMS | Relational DBMS Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB | Relational DBMS with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Secondary database models | Spatial DBMS | Document store Spatial DBMS Time Series DBMS with Informix TimeSeries Extension | Document store Graph DBMS with Apache Age Spatial DBMS Vector DBMS with pgvector extension | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Website | firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database | github.com/apple/foundationdb | www.h2database.com | www.ibm.com/products/informix | www.postgresql.org | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Technical documentation | firebase.google.com/docs/database | apple.github.io/foundationdb | www.h2database.com/html/main.html | informix.hcldoc.com www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html | www.postgresql.org/docs | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Developer | Google acquired by Google 2014 | FoundationDB | Thomas Mueller | IBM, HCL Technologies Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales. | PostgreSQL Global Development Group www.postgresql.org/developer | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Initial release | 2012 | 2013 | 2005 | 1984 | 1989 1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Current release | 6.2.28, November 2020 | 2.2.220, July 2023 | 14.10.FC5, November 2020 | 16.3, May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
License Commercial or Open Source | commercial | Open Source Apache 2.0 | Open Source dual-licence (Mozilla public license, Eclipse public license) | commercial free developer edition available | Open Source BSD | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cloud-based only Only available as a cloud service | yes | no | no | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Implementation language | C++ | Java | C, C++ and Java | C | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Server operating systems | hosted | Linux OS X Windows | All OS with a Java VM | AIX HP-UX Linux macOS Solaris Windows | FreeBSD HP-UX Linux NetBSD OpenBSD OS X Solaris Unix Windows | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Data scheme | schema-free | schema-free some layers support schemas | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Typing predefined data types such as float or date | yes | no some layers support typing | yes | yes Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes | 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. | no | no | yes specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Secondary indexes | yes | no | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
SQL Support of SQL | no | supported in specific SQL layer only | yes | yes | yes standard with numerous extensions | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
APIs and other access methods | Android iOS JavaScript API RESTful HTTP API | JDBC ODBC | JDBC JSON API MongoDB compatible MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport) ODBC RESTful HTTP API | ADO.NET JDBC native C library ODBC streaming API for large objects | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Supported programming languages | Java JavaScript Objective-C | .Net C C++ Go Java JavaScript Node.js PHP Python Ruby Swift | Java | .Net C C++ Java JavaScript (Node.js) PHP Python Ruby | .Net C C++ Delphi Java JDBC JavaScript (Node.js) Perl PHP Python Tcl | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Server-side scripts Stored procedures | limited functionality with using 'rules' | in SQL-layer only | Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions | yes | user defined functions realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Triggers | Callbacks are triggered when data changes | no | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Partitioning methods Methods for storing different data on different nodes | Sharding | none | Sharding | partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Replication methods Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes | yes | With clustering: 2 database servers on different computers operate on identical copies of a database | Multi-source replication Source-replica replication | Source-replica replication other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
MapReduce Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods | no | no | no | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Consistency concepts Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system | Eventual Consistency if the client is offline Immediate Consistency if the client is online | Linearizable consistency | Immediate Consistency | Immediate Consistency | Immediate Consistency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Foreign keys Referential integrity | no | in SQL-layer only | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Transaction concepts Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data | yes | ACID | ACID | ACID | ACID | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Concurrency Support for concurrent manipulation of data | yes | yes | yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC) | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Durability Support for making data persistent | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In-memory capabilities Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only. | yes | yes | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
User concepts Access control | yes, based on authentication and database rules | no | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Firebase Realtime Database | FoundationDB | H2 | Informix | PostgreSQL | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DB-Engines blog posts | Cloud-based DBMS's popularity grows at high rates | PostgreSQL is the DBMS of the Year 2023 Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2022, defending the title from last year Snowflake is the DBMS of the Year 2021 Monitoring PostgreSQL with Redgate Monitor Realtime vs Cloud Firestore: Which Firebase Database to go? Atos cybersecurity blog: Misconfigured Firebase: A real-time cyber threat Don't be like these 900+ websites and expose millions of passwords via Firebase Google Firebase may have exposed 125M records from misconfigurations Google launches Firebase Genkit, a new open source framework for building AI-powered apps provided by Google News FoundationDB team's new venture, Antithesis, raises $47M to enhance software testing Stonebraker Seeks to Invert the Computing Paradigm with DBOS Antithesis raises $47M to launch an automated testing platform for software Antithesis Launches Out Of Stealth To Revolutionize Software Reliability Deno adds scaleable messaging with new Queues feature, sparks debate about proprietary services • DEVCLASS provided by Google News IBM Informix: A key part of IBM’s hybrid cloud and AI strategy Unlock the value of your Informix data for advanced analytics and AI with watsonx.data IBM Informix review: What you need to know about the software IBM Informix Database in the Cloud | AWS News Blog Taiwan charges 4 individuals for helping China poach tech talent provided by Google News Deep PostgreSQL Thoughts: Valuing Currency At Build, Microsoft Fabric, PostgreSQL and Cosmos DB get AI enhancements Nutanix partners with EDB to fit database service for AI – Blocks and Files How to Import CSV Data Into PostgreSQL Using Spring Boot Batch Nutanix and EDB enhance PostgreSQL for enterprise apps provided by Google News |
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