DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Db2 vs. Informix vs. Rockset vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Db2 vs. Informix vs. Rockset vs. SQLite

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.

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

A scalable, reliable search and analytics service in the cloud, built on RocksDB

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Relational DBMS
Search engine

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	0.79
Rank	#211	Overall
	#35	Document stores

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.ibm.com/products/db2

www.ibm.com/products/informix

rockset.com

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

docs.rockset.com

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

IBM

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Rockset

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2012

1983

host version

1984

2019

2000

Current release

12.1, October 2016

14.10.FC5, November 2020

3.46.0 (23 May 2024), May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free version is available

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Open Source

Public Domain

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.

Implementation language

C and C++

C, C++ and Java

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

dynamic typing

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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.

ingestion from XML files supported

Secondary indexes

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Read-only SQL queries, including JOINs

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

HTTP REST

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

.Net
C
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Sharding

Automatic sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

none

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

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

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

Access rights for users and organizations can be defined via Rockset console

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