DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. TimescaleDB vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. TimescaleDB vs. VoltDB

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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.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

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

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	4.46
Rank	#71	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Score	1.47
Rank	#157	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.timescale.com

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.timescale.com

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

Timescale

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

2012

2014

2017

2010

Current release

2.15.0, May 2024

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

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

Java, C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

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
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

JavaScript

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

Java

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

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

Multi-source replication
Source-replica 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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

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

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Snapshots and command logging

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

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