DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. HBase vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. HBase vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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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.

Wide-column store based on Apache Hadoop and on concepts of BigTable

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.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Primary database model

Document store

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial 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	30.50
Rank	#26	Overall
	#2	Wide column stores

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

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

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

hbase.apache.org

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

hbase.apache.org/book.html

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Powerset

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

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Microsoft

Initial release

2012

2008

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2014

Current release

2.3.4, January 2021

11.3.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription 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.

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

Implementation language

Java

C and C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Unix
Windows

using Cygwin

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

schema-free, schema definition possible

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

options to bring your own types, AVRO

yes

JSON 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

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Java API
RESTful HTTP API
Thrift

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

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

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C
C#
C++
Groovy
Java
PHP
Python
Scala

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

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

Coprocessors in Java

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

JavaScript

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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 or Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

yes

Single row ACID (across millions of columns)

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access Control Lists (ACL) for RBAC, integration with Apache Ranger for RBAC & ABAC

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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...
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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,...
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