DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. OpenSearch vs. TimescaleDB vs. Vitess

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. OpenSearch vs. TimescaleDB vs. Vitess

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 distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

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

Scalable, distributed, cloud-native DBMS, extending MySQL

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Document store
Spatial 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	16.36
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Score	0.82
Rank	#209	Overall
	#97	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

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

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

www.timescale.com

vitess.io

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

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

opensearch.org/docs/latest

docs.timescale.com

vitess.io/docs

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

Amazon Web Services

Timescale

The Linux Foundation, PlanetScale

Initial release

2012

1989

2021

2017

2013

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

2.5.0, January 2023

2.15.0, May 2024

15.0.2, December 2022

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 Version 2.0, commercial licenses available

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.

SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

STACKIT OpenSearch offers OpenSearch in a managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant, for a wide range of applications like analytics, website search, offering scalability and fast data access.
Aiven for OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.

Implementation language

C++

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
OS X
Windows

Docker
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

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

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 search fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
MySQL protocol
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

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

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

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

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

yes

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

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

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency across shards
Immediate Consistency within a shard

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

ACID at shard level

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
» more

Competitive advantages

Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
» more

Typical application scenarios

The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
» more

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