DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. Hypertable vs. IRONdb vs. PostgreSQL
System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. Hypertable vs. IRONdb vs. PostgreSQL
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| Name | Firebase Realtime Database Xexclude from comparison | FoundationDB Xexclude from comparison | Hypertable Xexclude from comparison | IRONdb 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| Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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. | Hypertable has stopped its further development with March 2016 and is removed from the DB-Engines ranking. | IRONdb seems to be discontinued. Therefore it is excluded 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. | An open source BigTable implementation based on distributed file systems such as Hadoop | A distributed Time Series DBMS with a focus on scalability, fault tolerance and operational simplicity | 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 | Wide column store | Time Series DBMS | 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 | Document store Graph DBMS with Apache AgeSpatial DBMS Vector DBMS with pgvector extension | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Website | firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database | github.com/apple/foundationdb | www.circonus.com/solutions/time-series-database/ | www.postgresql.org | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technical documentation | firebase.google.com/docs/database | apple.github.io/foundationdb | docs.circonus.com/irondb/category/getting-started | www.postgresql.org/docs | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Developer | Google acquired by Google 2014 | FoundationDB | Hypertable Inc. | Circonus LLC. | PostgreSQL Global Development Group www.postgresql.org/developer | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Initial release | 2012 | 2013 | 2009 | 2017 | 1989 1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Current release | 6.2.28, November 2020 | 0.9.8.11, March 2016 | V0.10.20, January 2018 | 16.3, May 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| License Commercial or Open Source | commercial | Open Source Apache 2.0 | Open Source GNU version 3. Commercial license available | commercial | Open Source BSD | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cloud-based only Only available as a cloud service | yes | no | no | no | no | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Implementation language | C++ | C++ | C and C++ | C | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server operating systems | hosted | Linux OS X Windows | Linux OS X Windows an inofficial Windows port is available | Linux | FreeBSD HP-UX Linux NetBSD OpenBSD OS X Solaris Unix Windows | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Data scheme | schema-free | schema-free some layers support schemas | schema-free | schema-free | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Typing predefined data types such as float or date | yes | no some layers support typing | no | yes text, numeric, histograms | 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 | restricted only exact value or prefix value scans | no | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SQL Support of SQL | no | supported in specific SQL layer only | no | SQL-like query language (Circonus Analytics Query Language: CAQL) | yes standard with numerous extensions | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| APIs and other access methods | Android iOS JavaScript API RESTful HTTP API | C++ API Thrift | 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.jsPHP Python Ruby Swift | C++ Java Perl PHP Python Ruby | .Net C C++ Clojure Erlang Go Haskell Java JavaScript JavaScript (Node.js) Lisp Lua Perl PHP Python R Ruby Rust Scala | .Net C C++ Delphi Java JDBCJavaScript (Node.js) Perl PHP Python Tcl | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Server-side scripts Stored procedures | limited functionality with using 'rules' | in SQL-layer only | no | yes, in Lua | 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 | no | no | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Partitioning methods Methods for storing different data on different nodes | Sharding | Sharding | Automatic, metric affinity per node | partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Replication methods Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes | yes | selectable replication factor on file system level | configurable replication factor, datacenter aware | Source-replica replication other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MapReduce Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods | no | no | yes | 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 per node, eventual consistency across nodes | Immediate Consistency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Foreign keys Referential integrity | no | in SQL-layer only | no | no | yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Transaction concepts Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data | yes | ACID | no | no | ACID | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Concurrency Support for concurrent manipulation of data | yes | yes | yes | 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. | no | no | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| User concepts Access control | yes, based on authentication and database rules | no | no | no | fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| More resources | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Firebase Realtime Database | FoundationDB | Hypertable | IRONdb | PostgreSQL | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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