DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. GigaSpaces vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. GigaSpaces vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. SQLite

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

High performance in-memory data grid platform, powering three products: Smart Cache, Smart ODS (Operational Data Store), Smart Augmented Transactions

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store

Document store
Object oriented DBMS

Values are user defined objects

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Graph DBMS
Search engine

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.97
Rank	#192	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#6	Object oriented DBMS

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

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

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.gigaspaces.com

www.ibm.com/products/db2

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.gigaspaces.com/latest/landing.html

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Gigaspaces Technologies

IBM

Microsoft

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2012

2000

1983

host version

2014

2000

Current release

15.5, September 2020

12.1, October 2016

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial licenses available

commercial

free version is available

commercial

Open Source

Public Domain

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

Java, C++, .Net

C and C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

hosted

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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.

XML can be used for describing objects metadata

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-99 for query and DML statements

yes

SQL-like query language

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

GigaSpaces LRMI
Hibernate
JCache
JDBC
JPA
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

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

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C++
Java
Python
Scala

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

JavaScript

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes, event driven architecture

yes

JavaScript

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

synchronous or asynchronous
Source-replica replication

synchronous or asynchronous

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Map-Reduce pattern can be built with XAP task executors

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable: ALL, QUORUM, ANY

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

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

Role-based access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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