DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Interbase vs. MySQL vs. Tarantool vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Interbase vs. MySQL vs. Tarantool vs. TimesTen

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

Widely used open source RDBMS

In-memory computing platform with a flexible data schema for efficiently building high-performance applications

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Document store
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS

with Tarantool/GIS extension

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

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	4.61
Rank	#72	Overall
	#39	Relational DBMS

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	1.72
Rank	#144	Overall
	#25	Document stores
	#25	Key-value stores
	#66	Relational DBMS

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

www.mysql.com

www.tarantool.io

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

dev.mysql.com/doc

www.tarantool.io/en/doc

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Embarcadero

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

2012

1984

1995

2008

1998

Current release

InterBase 2020, December 2019

8.4.0, April 2024

2.10.0, May 2022

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

BSD-2, source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Tarantool Enterprise

commercial

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 and C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Android
iOS
Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

BSD
Linux
macOS

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Flexible data schema: relational definition for tables with ability to store json-like documents in columns

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, double, decimal, uuid, integer, blob, boolean, datetime

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

Full-featured ANSI SQL support

yes

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Open binary protocol

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

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

C
C#
C++
Erlang
Go
Java
JavaScript
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Rust

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

Interbase procedure and trigger language

yes

proprietary syntax

Lua, C and SQL stored procedures

PL/SQL

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

yes, before/after data modification events, on replication events, client session events

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Sharding, partitioned with virtual buckets by user defined affinity key. Live resharding for scale up and scale down without maintenance downtime.

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Interbase Change Views

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Asynchronous replication with multi-master option
Configurable replication topology (full-mesh, chain, star)
Synchronous quorum replication (with Raft)

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

Casual consistency across sharding partitions
Eventual consistency within replicaset partition

when using asyncronous replication
Immediate Consistency within single instance
Sequential consistency including linearizable read within replicaset partition

when using Raft

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID, with serializable isolation and linearizable read (within partition); Configurable MVCC (within partition); No cross-shard distributed transactions

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Multiversion concurreny control

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes, cooperative multitasking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, write ahead logging

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

yes, full featured in-memory storage engine with persistence

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

Access Control Lists
Mutual TLS authentication for Tarantol Enterprise
Password based authentication
Role-based access control (RBAC) and LDAP for Tarantol Enterprise
Users and Roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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