DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. Postgres-XL vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage vs. Postgres-XL vs. SAP SQL Anywhere

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.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

A Wide Column Store for rapid development using massive semi-structured datasets

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

Primary database model

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	4.48
Rank	#75	Overall
	#6	Wide column stores

Score	0.49
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	4.25
Rank	#79	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/tables

www.postgres-xl.org

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

SAP

formerly Sybase

Initial release

2012

2014

2012

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

1992

Current release

10 R1, October 2018

17, July 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Mozilla public license

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

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
macOS

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

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.

yes

XML type, but no XML query functionality

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

yes

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

RESTful HTTP API

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

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

.Net
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

JavaScript

user defined functions

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

JavaScript

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

horizontal partitioning

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

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

Transaction concepts

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

yes

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

optimistic locking

ACID

MVCC

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

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Access rights based on private key authentication or shared access signatures

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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