DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Hazelcast vs. MySQL vs. Realm vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Hazelcast vs. MySQL vs. Realm 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.

A widely adopted in-memory data grid

Widely used open source RDBMS

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

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

Primary database model

Document store

Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Document store

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

JSON support with IMDG 3.12

Document store
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	5.97
Rank	#57	Overall
	#6	Key-value stores

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

hazelcast.org/imdg/docs

dev.mysql.com/doc

realm.io/docs

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Hazelcast

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Timescale

Initial release

2012

2008

1995

2014

2017

Current release

5.3.6, November 2023

8.4.0, April 2024

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2; commercial licenses available

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

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

Java

C and C++

Server operating systems

hosted

All OS with a Java VM

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

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

the object must implement a serialization strategy

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JCache
JPA
Memcached protocol
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

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

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C#
C++
Clojure
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

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

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

Event Listeners, Executor Services

yes

proprietary syntax

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

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

Events

yes

Change Listeners

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

none

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Replicated Map

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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 selectable by user

Raft Consensus Algorithm

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

one or two-phase-commit; repeatable reads; read commited

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

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Role-based access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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