DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Milvus vs. TimescaleDB vs. YDB

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Milvus vs. TimescaleDB vs. YDB

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.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A DBMS designed for efficient storage of vector data and vector similarity searches

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

A distributed fault-tolerant database service, with high availability, scalability, immediate consistency and ACID transactions and providing an Amazon DynamoDB compatible API

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

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	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.31
Rank	#113	Overall
	#3	Vector DBMS

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Score	0.35
Rank	#278	Overall
	#43	Document stores
	#127	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

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

milvus.io

www.timescale.com

github.com/ydb-platform/ydb
ydb.tech

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

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

milvus.io/docs/overview.md

docs.timescale.com

ydb.tech/en/docs

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

Timescale

Yandex

Initial release

2012

1989

2019

2017

2019

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

2.3.4, January 2024

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0; commercial license available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Zilliz Cloud – Cloud-native service for Milvus

Implementation language

C++

C++, Go

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS

10.14 or later
Windows

with WSL 2 enabled

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Vector, Numeric and String

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

SQL-like query language (YQL)

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

RESTful HTTP API

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

RESTful HTTP API (DynamoDB compatible)

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

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

Sharding

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

Active-passive shard replication

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

Bounded Staleness
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Session Consistency
Tunable Consistency

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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Role based access control and fine grained access rights

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights defined for Yandex Cloud users

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Milvus is an open-source and cloud-native vector database built for production-ready...
» more

Competitive advantages

Highly available, versatile, and robust with millisecond latency. Supports batch...
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Typical application scenarios

RAG: retrieval augmented generation Video media : video understanding, video deduplication....
» more

Key customers

Milvus is trusted by thousands of enterprises, including PayPal, eBay, IKEA, LINE,...
» more

Market metrics

As of January 2024, 25k+ GitHub stars 10M+ downloads and installations 3k+ enterprise...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Milvus was released under the open-source Apache License 2.0 in October 2019. Fully-managed...
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