DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. MySQL vs. PostGIS vs. ScyllaDB

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. MySQL vs. PostGIS vs. ScyllaDB

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

Widely used open source RDBMS

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

Cassandra and DynamoDB compatible wide column store

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Spatial DBMS

Wide column store

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

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

Score	13.60
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	807.76
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	1029.49
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	20.16
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Score	4.15
Rank	#69	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

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

www.mysql.com

postgis.net

www.scylladb.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

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

dev.mysql.com/doc

postgis.net/documentation

docs.scylladb.com

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

ScyllaDB

Initial release

2012

1989

1995

2005

2015

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

9.0.0, July 2024

3.4.2, February 2024

ScyllaDB Open Source 6.0.2, July 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

GPL v2.0

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), 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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Implementation language

C++

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

cluster global secondary indices

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Proprietary protocol (CQL)

compatible with CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
RESTful HTTP API (DynamoDB compatible)
Thrift

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

For CQL interface: C#, C++, Clojure, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala
For DynamoDB interface: .Net, ColdFusion, Erlang, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

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

yes

proprietary syntax

user defined functions

yes, Lua

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

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

based on PostgreSQL

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

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

Eventual Consistency
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

yes

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

in-memory tables

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Access rights for users can be defined per object

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

ScyllaDB is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale. It’s adopted...
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Competitive advantages

Highly-performant (efficiently utilizes full resources of a node and network; millions...
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Typical application scenarios

ScyllaDB is ideal for applications that require high throughput and low latency at...
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Key customers

Discord, Epic Games, Expedia, Zillow, Comcast, Disney+ Hotstar, Samsung, ShareChat,...
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Market metrics

ScyllaDB typically offers ~75% total cost of ownership savings, with ~5X higher throughput...
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Licensing and pricing models

ScyllaDB Open Source - free open source software (AGPL) ScyllaDB Enterprise - subscription-based...
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