DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. mSQL vs. ObjectBox vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. mSQL vs. ObjectBox 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.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

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

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Object oriented DBMS

Search engine

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Time Series 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	1.27
Rank	#167	Overall
	#77	Relational DBMS

Score	1.20
Rank	#170	Overall
	#5	Object oriented DBMS

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

objectbox.io

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.objectbox.io

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

Hughes Technologies

ObjectBox Limited

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2012

2014

1994

2017

2001

Current release

4.4, October 2021

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free licenses can be provided

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

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

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

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary native API

Proprietary protocol

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
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

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'

JavaScript

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Sharding

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

online/offline synchronization between client and server

none

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

none

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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.

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

News

The first On-Device Vector Database: ObjectBox 4.0
16 May 2024

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

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