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

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

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

Virtuoso is a multi-model hybrid-RDBMS that supports management of data represented as relational tables and/or property graphs

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Native XML DBMS
Relational DBMS
RDF store
Search engine

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

Spatial DBMS

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	3.99
Rank	#75	Overall
	#13	Document stores
	#4	Graph DBMS
	#2	Native XML DBMS
	#40	Relational DBMS
	#2	RDF stores
	#9	Search engines

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

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

www.mysql.com

postgis.net

virtuoso.openlinksw.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

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

dev.mysql.com/doc

postgis.net/documentation

docs.openlinksw.com/virtuoso

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

OpenLink Software

Initial release

2012

1989

1995

2005

1998

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

9.0.0, July 2024

3.4.2, February 2024

7.2.11, September 2023

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

GPLv2, extended commercial license available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

SQL - Standard relational schema
RDF - Quad (S, P, O, G) or Triple (S, P, O)
XML - DTD, XML Schema
DAV - freeform filesystem objects, plus User Defined Types a/k/a Dynamic Extension Type

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

SQL-92, SQL-200x, SQL-3, SQLX

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

ADO.NET
GeoSPARQL
HTTP API
JDBC
Jena RDF API
ODBC
OLE DB
RDF4J API
RESTful HTTP API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SOAP webservices
SPARQL 1.1
WebDAV
XPath
XQuery
XSLT

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

.Net
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

Virtuoso PL

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

yes

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

Chain, star, and bi-directional replication
Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

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

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

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

Fine-grained Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) in addition to typical coarse-grained Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) according to SQL-standard. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Virtuoso is a modern multi-model RDBMS for managing data represented as tabular relations...
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Competitive advantages

Performance & Scale — as exemplified by DBpedia and the LOD Cloud it spawned, i.e.,...
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Typical application scenarios

Used for — Analytics/BI Conceptual Data Virtualization Enterprise Knowledge Graphs...
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Key customers

Broad use across enterprises and governments including — European Union (EU) US Government...
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Market metrics

Largest installed-base of Multi-Model RDBMS for AI-friendly Knowledge Graphs Platform...
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Licensing and pricing models

Available in both Commercial Enterprise and Open Source (GPL v2) Editions Feature...
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