DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. NSDb vs. RDF4J vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. NSDb vs. RDF4J vs. Sphinx

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

Scalable, High-performance Time Series DBMS designed for Real-time Analytics on top of Kubernetes

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

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	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#41	Time Series DBMS

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

google.github.io/lovefield

nsdb.io

rdf4j.org

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

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

nsdb.io/Architecture

rdf4j.org/documentation

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2012

2014

2017

2004

2001

Current release

2.1.12, February 2017

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence 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

JavaScript

Java, Scala

Java

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

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

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Linux
macOS

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

RDF Schemas

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes: int, bigint, decimal, string

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 fields are automatically indexed

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

SQL-like query language

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

gRPC
HTTP REST
WebSocket

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

JavaScript

Java
Scala

Java
PHP
Python

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

Using read-only observers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

none

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Isolation support depends on the API used

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

Using Apache Lucene

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

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

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

Related products and services

We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

Cloud-based DBMS's popularity grows at high rates
12 December 2019, Paul Andlinger

show all

The DB-Engines ranking includes now search engines
4 February 2013, Paul Andlinger

show all

Recent citations in the news

Realtime vs Cloud Firestore: Which Firebase Database to go?
8 March 2024, Appinventiv

Atos cybersecurity blog: Misconfigured Firebase: A real-time cyber threat
18 January 2024, Atos

Don't be like these 900+ websites and expose millions of passwords via Firebase
18 March 2024, The Register

Google Firebase may have exposed 125M records from misconfigurations
19 March 2024, SC Media

Hundreds of Google Firebase websites might have leaked data online
19 March 2024, TechRadar

provided by Google News

GraphDB Goes Open Source
27 January 2020, iProgrammer

Ontotext's GraphDB 8.10 Makes Knowledge Graph Experience Faster and Richer
13 June 2019, Markets Insider

provided by Google News

Switching From Sphinx to MkDocs Documentation — What Did I Gain and Lose
2 February 2024, Towards Data Science

Manticore is a Faster Alternative to Elasticsearch in C++
25 July 2022, hackernoon.com

Perplexity AI: From Its Use To Operation, Everything You Need To Know About Googles Newest Challenger
11 January 2024, Free Press Journal

The Pirate Bay was recently down for over a week due to a DDoS attack
29 October 2019, The Hacker News

How to Build 600+ Links in One Month
4 September 2020, Search Engine Journal

provided by Google News

Share this page