DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. Spark SQL

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics vs. Spark SQL

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.

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Elastic, large scale data warehouse service leveraging the broad eco-system of SQL Server

Spark SQL is a component on top of 'Spark Core' for structured data processing

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.33
Rank	#286	Overall
	#131	Relational DBMS

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	19.93
Rank	#31	Overall
	#19	Relational DBMS

Score	18.04
Rank	#33	Overall
	#20	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

google.github.io/lovefield

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/services/synapse-analytics

spark.apache.org/sql

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.microsoft.com/azure/synapse-analytics

spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

Microsoft

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

2012

2014

2016

2014

Current release

2.1.12, February 2017

3.5.0 ( 2.13), September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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

JavaScript

C++

Scala

Server operating systems

hosted

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

SQL-like query language

yes

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

JavaScript

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

C#
Java
PHP

Java
Python
R
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

JavaScript

Transact SQL

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

Using read-only observers

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

yes, utilizing Spark Core

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/synapse-analytics/sql-data-warehouse/sql-data-warehouse-table-constraints

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

yes

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