DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. GigaSpaces vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. GigaSpaces vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Snowflake

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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

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Document store

Document store
Object oriented DBMS

Values are user defined objects

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Graph DBMS
Search engine

Document store
Graph DBMS
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	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.gigaspaces.com

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.gigaspaces.com/latest/landing.html

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Gigaspaces Technologies

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2012

2000

2010

2014

Current release

15.5, September 2020

V12

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial licenses available

commercial

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++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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.

XML can be used for describing objects metadata

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-99 for query and DML statements

yes

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
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C++
Java
Python
Scala

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

Transact SQL

user defined functions

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes, event driven architecture

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

synchronous or asynchronous
Source-replica replication

synchronous or asynchronous

yes, with always 3 replicas available

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Map-Reduce pattern can be built with XAP task executors

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Role-based access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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