DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TimescaleDB vs. VictoriaMetrics

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TimescaleDB vs. VictoriaMetrics

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

A fast, cost-effective and scalable Time Series DBMS and monitoring solution

Primary database model

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Score	1.32
Rank	#162	Overall
	#14	Time Series DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

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

www.timescale.com

victoriametrics.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

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

docs.timescale.com

docs.victoriametrics.com
github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/wiki

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

Timescale

VictoriaMetrics

Initial release

2012

2014

1989

2017

2018

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

2.15.0, May 2024

v1.91, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS
OpenBSD

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

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
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

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

Graphite protocol
InfluxDB Line Protocol
OpenTSDB
Prometheus Query API
Prometheus Remote Read/Write

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

JavaScript

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

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

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

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

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

Synchronous replication

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

Eventual 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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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