DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. MySQL vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. MySQL vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. TimescaleDB

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.

Cloud Firestore is an auto-scaling document database for storing, syncing, and querying data for mobile and web apps. It offers seamless integration with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products.

Widely used open source RDBMS

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	7.85
Rank	#51	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	4.25
Rank	#79	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

firebase.google.com/products/firestore

www.mysql.com

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

dev.mysql.com/doc

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

SAP

formerly Sybase

Timescale

Initial release

2012

2017

1995

1992

2017

Current release

8.4.0, April 2024

17, July 2015

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

C and C++

Server operating systems

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Android
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
Python

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

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes, Firebase Rules & Cloud Functions

yes

proprietary syntax

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes, with Cloud Functions

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

none

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Using Cloud Dataflow

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

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

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management. Security Rules for 3rd party authentication using Firebase Auth.

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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