DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. MonetDB vs. Stardog vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. MonetDB vs. Stardog vs. TimescaleDB

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 relational database management system that stores data in columns

Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization

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

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
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	1.72
Rank	#145	Overall
	#67	Relational DBMS

Score	2.02
Rank	#123	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

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

www.monetdb.org

www.stardog.com

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

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

www.monetdb.org/Documentation

docs.stardog.com

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

MonetDB BV

Stardog-Union

Timescale

Initial release

2012

1989

2004

2010

2017

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

Dec2023 (11.49), December 2023

7.3.0, May 2020

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Mozilla Public License 2.0

commercial

60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

Import/export of XML data possible

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL 2003 with some extensions

Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

JDBC
native C library

MAPI library (MonetDB application programming interface)
ODBC

GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Jena RDF API
OWL
RDF4J API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SNARL
SPARQL
Spring Data
Stardog Studio
TinkerPop 3

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

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

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

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

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

yes, in SQL, C, R

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in 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

via event handlers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

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

Sharding via remote tables

none

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

Source-replica replication available in experimental status

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

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

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

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

Access rights for users and roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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