DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RavenDB vs. SAP Adaptive Server vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RavenDB vs. SAP Adaptive Server vs. Weaviate

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

Open Source Operational and Transactional Enterprise NoSQL Document Database

The SAP (Sybase) Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) is an enterprise-class RDBMS

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Spatial DBMS

with Boeing's Spatial Query Server

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	2.92
Rank	#101	Overall
	#18	Document stores

Score	36.31
Rank	#25	Overall
	#17	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

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

ravendb.net

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sybase-ase.html

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

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

ravendb.net/docs

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_ASE

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

Hibernating Rhinos

SAP, Sybase

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2012

1989

2010

1987

2019

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.4, July 2022

16.0

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

AGPL version 3, commercial license available

commercial

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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.

Implementation language

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS
Raspberry Pi
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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 data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language (RQL)

yes

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

.NET Client API
F# Client API
Go Client API
Java Client API
NodeJS Client API
PHP Client API
Python Client API
RESTful HTTP API

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

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

.Net
C#
F#
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C++
Cobol
Java
Java
Perl
PHP
Python

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

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

yes

Java and Transact-SQL

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

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

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

Default ACID transactions on the local node (eventually consistent across the cluster). Atomic operations with cluster-wide ACID transactions. Eventual consistency for indexes and full-text search indexes.

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

ACID, Cluster-wide transaction available

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

Authorization levels configured per client per database

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
» more

Competitive advantages

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
» more

Typical application scenarios

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
» more

Key customers

All companies that have data.
» more

Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
» more

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.