DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. MySQL vs. NSDb vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. MySQL vs. NSDb vs. TimesTen

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Widely used open source RDBMS

Scalable, High-performance Time Series DBMS designed for Real-time Analytics on top of Kubernetes

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
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	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#41	Time Series DBMS

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.mysql.com

nsdb.io

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

apple.github.io/foundationdb

dev.mysql.com/doc

nsdb.io/Architecture

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

FoundationDB

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

2012

2013

1995

2017

1998

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

8.4.0, April 2024

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

C++

C and C++

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

yes

yes: int, bigint, decimal, string

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like query language

yes

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

gRPC
HTTP REST
WebSocket

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Java
Scala

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

in SQL-layer only

yes

proprietary syntax

PL/SQL

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

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

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Using Apache Lucene

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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