DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. HBase vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Sqrrl

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. HBase vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Sqrrl

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Sqrrl has been acquired by Amazon and became a part of Amazon Web Services. It has been removed from the DB-Engines 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.

Wide-column store based on Apache Hadoop and on concepts of BigTable

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Adaptable, secure NoSQL built on Apache Accumulo

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Wide column store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	30.50
Rank	#26	Overall
	#2	Wide column stores

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

github.com/apple/foundationdb

hbase.apache.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

sqrrl.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

apple.github.io/foundationdb

hbase.apache.org/book.html

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

FoundationDB

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Powerset

Microsoft

Amazon

originally Sqrrl Data, Inc.

Initial release

2012

2013

2008

2014

2012

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

2.3.4, January 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Unix
Windows

using Cygwin

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free, schema definition possible

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

options to bring your own types, AVRO

yes

JSON types

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Java API
RESTful HTTP API
Thrift

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Accumulo Shell
Java API
JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Thrift

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

C
C#
C++
Groovy
Java
PHP
Python
Scala

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

Actionscript
C

using GLib
C#
C++
Cocoa
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

in SQL-layer only

yes

Coprocessors in Java

JavaScript

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

making use of Hadoop

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

selectable replication factor

making use of Hadoop

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

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 or Eventual Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Document store kept consistent with combination of global timestamping, row-level transactions, and server-side consistency resolution.

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Single row ACID (across millions of columns)

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

Atomic updates per row, document, or graph entity

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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

Access Control Lists (ACL) for RBAC, integration with Apache Ranger for RBAC & ABAC

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Cell-level Security, Data-Centric Security, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC)

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