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DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. RethinkDB

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. RethinkDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameFirebase Realtime Database  Xexclude from comparisonGoogle Cloud Spanner  Xexclude from comparisonRethinkDB  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionCloud-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.DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.
Primary database modelDocument storeRelational DBMSDocument store
Secondary database modelsSpatial DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score14.29
Rank#39  Overall
#6  Document stores
Score2.89
Rank#103  Overall
#52  Relational DBMS
Score2.74
Rank#105  Overall
#19  Document stores
Websitefirebase.google.com/­products/­realtime-databasecloud.google.com/­spannerrethinkdb.com
Technical documentationfirebase.google.com/­docs/­databasecloud.google.com/­spanner/­docsrethinkdb.com/­docs
DeveloperGoogle infoacquired by Google 2014GoogleThe Linux Foundation infosince July 2017
Initial release201220172009
Current release2.4.1, August 2020
License infoCommercial or Open SourcecommercialcommercialOpen Source infoApache Version 2
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud serviceyesyesno
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

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Implementation languageC++
Server operating systemshostedhostedLinux
OS X
Windows
Data schemeschema-freeyesschema-free
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes infostring, binary, float, bool, date, geometry
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.nonono
Secondary indexesyesyesyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLnoyes infoQuery statements complying to ANSI 2011no
APIs and other access methodsAndroid
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC infoAt present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API
Supported programming languagesJava
JavaScript
Objective-C
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
C infocommunity-supported driver
C# infocommunity-supported driver
C++ infocommunity-supported driver
Clojure infocommunity-supported driver
Dart infocommunity-supported driver
Erlang infocommunity-supported driver
Go infocommunity-supported driver
Haskell infocommunity-supported driver
Java infoofficial driver
JavaScript (Node.js) infoofficial driver
Lisp infocommunity-supported driver
Lua infocommunity-supported driver
Objective-C infocommunity-supported driver
Perl infocommunity-supported driver
PHP infocommunity-supported driver
Python infoofficial driver
Ruby infoofficial driver
Scala infocommunity-supported driver
Server-side scripts infoStored procedureslimited functionality with using 'rules'no
TriggersCallbacks are triggered when data changesnoClient-side triggers through changefeeds
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesShardingSharding inforange based
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesMulti-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.Source-replica replication
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnoyes infousing Google Cloud Dataflowyes
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemEventual Consistency infoif the client is offline
Immediate Consistency infoif the client is online
Immediate ConsistencyImmediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integritynoyes infoby using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrityno
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of datayesACID infoStrict serializable isolationAtomic single-document operations
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyes infoMVCC based
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.nono
User concepts infoAccess controlyes, based on authentication and database rulesAccess rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)yes infousers and table-level permissions

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More resources
Firebase Realtime DatabaseGoogle Cloud SpannerRethinkDB
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Realtime vs Cloud Firestore: Which Firebase Database to go?
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