DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. ObjectBox vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Lovefield vs. ObjectBox vs. Sphinx

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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.

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Extremely fast embedded database for small devices, IoT and Mobile

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	15.00
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.32
Rank	#290	Overall
	#132	Relational DBMS

Score	1.22
Rank	#172	Overall
	#5	Object oriented DBMS

Score	6.03
Rank	#60	Overall
	#6	Search engines

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

google.github.io/lovefield

objectbox.io

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

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

docs.objectbox.io

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

ObjectBox Limited

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2012

2014

2017

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 License 2.0

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

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

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

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Android
iOS
Linux
macOS
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
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.

Secondary indexes

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary native API

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

JavaScript

C
C++
Dart
Go
Java
JavaScript

planned (as of Jan 2019)
Kotlin
Python

planned (as of Jan 2019)
Swift

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'

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

Using read-only observers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

online/offline synchronization between client and server

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

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

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

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

News

Edge AI: The era of on-device AI
23 April 2024

In-Memory Database Use Cases
15 February 2024

Data Viewer for Objects – announcing ObjectBox Admin
14 November 2023

Vector Databases for Edge AI
9 August 2023

Vector Database Release for Flutter / Dart + Python
13 June 2023

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

Related products and services

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

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

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

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