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

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

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Spatial extension of SQLite

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Spatial DBMS

Relational 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	1.63
Rank	#146	Overall
	#3	Spatial DBMS

Score	1.47
Rank	#157	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.h2database.com

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

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

apple.github.io/foundationdb

www.h2database.com/html/main.html

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

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

FoundationDB

Thomas Mueller

Alessandro Furieri

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2012

2013

2005

2008

2010

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

2.2.220, July 2023

5.0.0, August 2020

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

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

Open Source

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

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

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++

Java, C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

server-less

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

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

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

Java

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

in SQL-layer only

Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions

Java

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

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

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Snapshots and command logging

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

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

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

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 launches Firebase Genkit, a new open source framework for building AI-powered apps
14 May 2024, TechCrunch

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

provided by Google News

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

FoundationDB, a very interesting NoSQL database owned by Apple, is now an open-source project
19 April 2018, GeekWire

Apple Open Sources FoundationDB
19 April 2018, MacRumors

provided by Google News

Unveiling Volt Active Data's game-changing approach to limitless app performance
16 October 2023, YourStory

VoltDB Launches Active(N) Lossless Cross Data Center Replication
31 August 2021, PR Newswire

VoltDB Turns to Real-Time Analytics with NewSQL Database
30 January 2014, Datanami

VoltDB Upgrades Power, Security of Its In-Memory Database
1 February 2017, eWeek

VoltDB Adds Geospatial Support, Cross-Site Replication
28 January 2016, The New Stack

provided by Google News

Share this page