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

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. H2 vs. ScyllaDB 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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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.

Cassandra and DynamoDB compatible wide column store

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

Wide column store

Spatial DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Key-value store

Relational DBMS

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

Score	13.60
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.97
Rank	#191	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#87	Relational DBMS

Score	7.57
Rank	#47	Overall
	#30	Relational DBMS

Score	4.15
Rank	#69	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Score	1.56
Rank	#142	Overall
	#3	Spatial DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.h2database.com

www.scylladb.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

docs.scylladb.com

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

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

FoundationDB

Thomas Mueller

ScyllaDB

Alessandro Furieri

Initial release

2012

2013

2005

2015

2008

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

2.2.220, July 2023

ScyllaDB Open Source 6.0.2, July 2024

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

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license available

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.

Scylla Cloud: Create real-time applications that run at global scale with Scylla Cloud, the industry’s most powerful NoSQL DBaaS

Implementation language

C++

Java

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Linux

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

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

cluster global secondary indices

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary protocol (CQL)

compatible with CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
RESTful HTTP API (DynamoDB compatible)
Thrift

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

Java

For CQL interface: C#, C++, Clojure, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala
For DynamoDB interface: .Net, ColdFusion, Erlang, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

in SQL-layer only

Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions

yes, Lua

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

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

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

Eventual Consistency
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

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

in-memory tables

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users can be defined per object

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

ScyllaDB is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale. It’s adopted...
» more

Competitive advantages

Highly-performant (efficiently utilizes full resources of a node and network; millions...
» more

Typical application scenarios

ScyllaDB is ideal for applications that require high throughput and low latency at...
» more

Key customers

Discord, Epic Games, Expedia, Zillow, Comcast, Disney+ Hotstar, Samsung, ShareChat,...
» more

Market metrics

ScyllaDB typically offers ~75% total cost of ownership savings, with ~5X higher throughput...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

ScyllaDB Open Source - free open source software (AGPL) ScyllaDB Enterprise - subscription-based...
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

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

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Spatial database management systems
6 April 2021, Matthias Gelbmann

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