DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. LeanXcale vs. PostgreSQL vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. LeanXcale vs. PostgreSQL vs. Realm

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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 highly scalable full ACID SQL database with fast NoSQL data ingestion and GIS capabilities

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

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

Primary database model

Document store

Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

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

Score	15.00
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.35
Rank	#283	Overall
	#41	Key-value stores
	#128	Relational DBMS

Score	645.05
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	7.71
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.leanxcale.com

www.postgresql.org

realm.io

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

www.postgresql.org/docs

realm.io/docs

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

LeanXcale

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

2012

2015

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2014

Current release

16.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

BSD

Open Source

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.

Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools.

Implementation language

Server operating systems

hosted

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

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.

yes

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

through Apache Derby

yes

standard with numerous extensions

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
Kafka Connector
ODBC
proprietary key/value interface
Spark Connector

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

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C
Java
Scala

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

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

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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

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