DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. MariaDB vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. MariaDB vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. VoltDB

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.

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

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

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	13.60
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	2.69
Rank	#101	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Score	83.44
Rank	#15	Overall
	#10	Relational DBMS

Score	3.50
Rank	#81	Overall
	#44	Relational DBMS

Score	1.38
Rank	#156	Overall
	#72	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

cloud.google.com/spanner

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

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

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

SAP

formerly Sybase

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2012

2017

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

1992

2010

Current release

11.5.2, August 2024

17, July 2015

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

commercial

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

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.

STACKIT MariaDB offers MariaDB in a fully managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

C and C++

Java, C++

Server operating systems

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

yes

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
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

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

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

Java

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google 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

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

Snapshots and command logging

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

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 (IAM)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
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Competitive advantages

MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
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Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
» more

Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
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Market metrics

MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
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Licensing and pricing models

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
» more

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