DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RethinkDB vs. SpaceTime

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RethinkDB vs. SpaceTime

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.

SpaceTime is a spatio-temporal DBMS with a focus on performance.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.74
Rank	#105	Overall
	#19	Document stores

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#7	Spatial DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

google.github.io/lovefield

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

rethinkdb.com

www.mireo.com/spacetime

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

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

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

rethinkdb.com/docs

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

Microsoft

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

Mireo

Initial release

2012

2014

1989

2009

2020

Current release

2.1.12, February 2017

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

2.4.1, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

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++

Server operating systems

hosted

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

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

yes

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

JavaScript

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

community-supported driver
C#

community-supported driver
C++

community-supported driver
Clojure

community-supported driver
Dart

community-supported driver
Erlang

community-supported driver
Go

community-supported driver
Haskell

community-supported driver
Java

official driver
JavaScript (Node.js)

official driver
Lisp

community-supported driver
Lua

community-supported driver
Objective-C

community-supported driver
Perl

community-supported driver
PHP

community-supported driver
Python

official driver
Ruby

official driver
Scala

community-supported driver

C#
C++
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

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

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

Using read-only observers

yes

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

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

Sharding

range based

Fixed-grid hypercubes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication

Real-time block device replication (DRBD)

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

Atomic single-document operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC based

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

users and table-level permissions

yes

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