DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. ObjectBox vs. SQLite vs. Stardog

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. ObjectBox vs. SQLite vs. Stardog

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Extremely fast embedded database for small devices, IoT and Mobile

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Object oriented DBMS

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Secondary database models

Time Series 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	1.20
Rank	#170	Overall
	#5	Object oriented DBMS

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Score	2.02
Rank	#123	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

github.com/apple/foundationdb

objectbox.io

www.sqlite.org

www.stardog.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

apple.github.io/foundationdb

docs.objectbox.io

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

docs.stardog.com

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

FoundationDB

ObjectBox Limited

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Stardog-Union

Initial release

2012

2013

2017

2000

2010

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

7.3.0, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache License 2.0

Open Source

Public Domain

commercial

60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students

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++

C and C++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Android
iOS
Linux
macOS
Windows

server-less

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

dynamic column types

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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.

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary native API

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Jena RDF API
OWL
RDF4J API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SNARL
SPARQL
Spring Data
Stardog Studio
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

C
C++
Dart
Go
Java
JavaScript

planned (as of Jan 2019)
Kotlin
Python

planned (as of Jan 2019)
Swift

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

in SQL-layer only

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

online/offline synchronization between client and server

none

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

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

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

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

yes

Access rights for users and roles

More information provided by the system vendor

News

Edge AI: The era of on-device AI
23 April 2024

In-Memory Database Use Cases
15 February 2024

Data Viewer for Objects – announcing ObjectBox Admin
14 November 2023

Vector Databases for Edge AI
9 August 2023

Vector Database Release for Flutter / Dart + Python
13 June 2023

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.