DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. Realm vs. SAP HANA

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. FoundationDB vs. Realm vs. SAP HANA

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

In-memory, column based data store. Available as appliance or cloud service

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with SAP Hana, Enterprise Edition
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	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	44.69
Rank	#22	Overall
	#16	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

github.com/apple/foundationdb

realm.io

www.sap.com/products/hana.html

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

apple.github.io/foundationdb

realm.io/docs

help.sap.com/hana

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

FoundationDB

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

SAP

Initial release

2012

2013

2014

2010

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

2.0 SPS07 (April 4, 2023), April 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

also available as a cloud based service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Appliance or cloud-service

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

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

in SQL-layer only

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

SQLScript, R

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Change Listeners

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

none

yes

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

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

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

In-Memory realm

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

yes

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.