DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. H2 vs. RethinkDB vs. SpatiaLite

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. H2 vs. RethinkDB vs. SpatiaLite

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

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.

DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.

Spatial extension of SQLite

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Document store

Spatial DBMS

Secondary database models

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

Score	8.33
Rank	#46	Overall
	#30	Relational DBMS

Score	2.66
Rank	#107	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	1.63
Rank	#146	Overall
	#3	Spatial DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.h2database.com

rethinkdb.com

www.gaia-gis.it/fossil/libspatialite/index

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

apple.github.io/foundationdb

www.h2database.com/html/main.html

rethinkdb.com/docs

www.gaia-gis.it/gaia-sins/spatialite_topics.html

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

FoundationDB

Thomas Mueller

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

Alessandro Furieri

Initial release

2012

2013

2005

2009

2008

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

2.2.220, July 2023

2.4.1, August 2020

5.0.0, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

dual-licence (Mozilla public license, Eclipse public license)

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

MPL 1.1, GPL v2.0 or LGPL v2.1

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++

Java

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
OS X
Windows

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

yes

string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

Java

community-supported driver
C#

community-supported driver
C++

community-supported driver
Clojure

community-supported driver
Dart

community-supported driver
Erlang

community-supported driver
Go

community-supported driver
Haskell

community-supported driver
Java

official driver
JavaScript (Node.js)

official driver
Lisp

community-supported driver
Lua

community-supported driver
Objective-C

community-supported driver
Perl

community-supported driver
PHP

community-supported driver
Python

official driver
Ruby

official driver
Scala

community-supported driver

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

in SQL-layer only

Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

range based

none

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

Source-replica replication

none

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

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Atomic single-document operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

MVCC based

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

users and table-level permissions

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.

Related products and services

We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

Cloud-based DBMS's popularity grows at high rates
12 December 2019, Paul Andlinger

show all

Meet some database management systems you are likely to hear more about in the future
4 August 2014, Paul Andlinger

show all

Spatial database management systems
6 April 2021, Matthias Gelbmann

show all

Recent citations in the news

Realtime vs Cloud Firestore: Which Firebase Database to go?
8 March 2024, Appinventiv

Atos cybersecurity blog: Misconfigured Firebase: A real-time cyber threat
18 January 2024, Atos

Don't be like these 900+ websites and expose millions of passwords via Firebase
18 March 2024, The Register

Google Firebase may have exposed 125M records from misconfigurations
19 March 2024, SC Media

Hundreds of Google Firebase websites might have leaked data online
19 March 2024, TechRadar

provided by Google News

FoundationDB Raises $17 Million Series A Financing
31 May 2024, Yahoo Movies UK

FoundationDB team's new venture, Antithesis, raises $47M to enhance software testing
13 February 2024, SiliconANGLE News

Stonebraker Seeks to Invert the Computing Paradigm with DBOS
12 March 2024, Datanami

Antithesis raises $47M to launch an automated testing platform for software
13 February 2024, TechCrunch

Antithesis Launches Out Of Stealth To Revolutionize Software Reliability
13 February 2024, Longview News-Journal

provided by Google News

An introduction to building realtime apps with RethinkDB
9 July 2022, devm.io

How to Use RethinkDB with Node.js Applications — SitePoint
16 December 2015, SitePoint

Stripe acquires team behind NoSQL database startup RethinkDB
5 October 2016, VentureBeat

MongoDB: The Popular Database for IoT
15 August 2023, Open Source For You

RethinkDB is dead, and MongoDB isn't what killed it
24 January 2017, TechRepublic

provided by Google News

Share this page