DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Interbase vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. Microsoft SQL Server

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Interbase vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. Microsoft SQL Server

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.

Light-weight proven RDBMS

originally from Borland

High performance Time Series DBMS

A Wide Column Store for rapid development using massive semi-structured datasets

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	15.00
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	5.04
Rank	#71	Overall
	#39	Relational DBMS

Score	7.70
Rank	#53	Overall
	#3	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	4.92
Rank	#73	Overall
	#6	Wide column stores

Score	829.80
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

kx.com

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/tables

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

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

code.kx.com

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

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Embarcadero

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Microsoft

Initial release

2012

1984

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2012

1989

Current release

InterBase 2020, December 2019

3.6, May 2018

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free 32-bit version

commercial

restricted free version is available

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++

Server operating systems

hosted

Android
iOS
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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.

export as XML data possible

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

table attribute 'grouped'

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language (q)

yes

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

RESTful HTTP API

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

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
Object Pascal
PHP
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Go
J
Java
JavaScript
Lua
MatLab
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Scala

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

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

Interbase procedure and trigger language

user defined functions

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

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

with views

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Interbase Change Views

Source-replica replication

yes

implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

similar paradigm used for internal processing

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

optimistic locking

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Multiversion concurreny control

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

rights management via user accounts

Access rights based on private key authentication or shared access signatures

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
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Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
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Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
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Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
» more

Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
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Licensing and pricing models

upon request
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.