DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. HarperDB vs. MySQL vs. OpenSearch vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. HarperDB vs. MySQL vs. OpenSearch vs. Snowflake

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.

Widely used open source RDBMS

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Search engine

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Vector 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	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	16.36
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.harperdb.io

www.mysql.com

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.harperdb.io/docs

dev.mysql.com/doc

opensearch.org/docs/latest

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

HarperDB

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Amazon Web Services

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2012

2017

1995

2021

2014

Current release

3.1, August 2021

8.4.0, April 2024

2.5.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free community edition available

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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STACKIT OpenSearch offers OpenSearch in a managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant, for a wide range of applications like analytics, website search, offering scalability and fast data access.
Aiven for OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.

Implementation language

Node.js

C and C++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

dynamic schema

yes

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

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

All search fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like data manipulation statements

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like query language

yes

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
Proprietary native API

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

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

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

yes

proprietary syntax

yes

user defined functions

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

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

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Sharding

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

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

Atomic execution of specific operations

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

yes, using LMDB

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 and roles

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
» more

Competitive advantages

Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
» more

Typical application scenarios

The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
» more

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