DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Informix vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Postgres-XL

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Informix vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Postgres-XL

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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.

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	13.60
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	16.32
Rank	#35	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	807.76
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.43
Rank	#260	Overall
	#119	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.ibm.com/products/informix

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

www.postgres-xl.org

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

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

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

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

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.

Microsoft

Initial release

2012

1984

1989

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

10 R1, October 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
JSON API

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

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

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

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

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

user defined functions

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

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

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

MVCC

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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