DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. HarperDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Quasardb vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. HarperDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Quasardb 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.

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Distributed, high-performance timeseries database

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

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
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	0.55
Rank	#248	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.14
Rank	#332	Overall
	#29	Time Series DBMS

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.harperdb.io

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

quasar.ai

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.harperdb.io/docs

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

doc.quasar.ai/master

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

HarperDB

Microsoft

quasardb

Timescale

Initial release

2012

2017

1989

2009

2017

Current release

3.1, August 2021

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

3.14.1, January 2024

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free community edition available

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Free community edition, Non-profit organizations and non-commercial usage are eligible for free licenses

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Node.js

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X

Linux
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

dynamic schema

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

yes

integer and binary

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

with tags

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like data manipulation statements

yes

SQL-like query language

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

HTTP API

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

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

.Net
C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

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

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Sharding

consistent hashing

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication with selectable replication factor

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

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

Transaction concepts

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

yes

Atomic execution of specific operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

yes

by using LevelDB

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Transient mode

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users and roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Cryptographically strong user authentication and audit trail

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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