DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. MySQL vs. PostGIS vs. Rockset vs. SpatiaLite

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. MySQL vs. PostGIS vs. Rockset vs. SpatiaLite

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.

Widely used open source RDBMS

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

A scalable, reliable search and analytics service in the cloud, built on RocksDB

Spatial extension of SQLite

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Spatial DBMS

Document store

Spatial DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS
Search engine

Relational DBMS

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

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	22.69
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Score	0.79
Rank	#211	Overall
	#35	Document stores

Score	1.60
Rank	#149	Overall
	#3	Spatial DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.mysql.com

postgis.net

rockset.com

www.gaia-gis.it/fossil/libspatialite/index

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

dev.mysql.com/doc

postgis.net/documentation

docs.rockset.com

www.gaia-gis.it/gaia-sins/spatialite_topics.html

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Rockset

Alessandro Furieri

Initial release

2012

1995

2005

2019

2008

Current release

8.4.0, April 2024

3.4.2, February 2024

5.0.0, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

GPL v2.0

commercial

Open Source

MPL 1.1, GPL v2.0 or LGPL v2.1

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.

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

dynamic typing

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

ingestion from XML files supported

Secondary indexes

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

Read-only SQL queries, including JOINs

yes

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

HTTP REST

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

proprietary syntax

user defined functions

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Automatic sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

based on PostgreSQL

yes

none

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

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Access rights for users and organizations can be defined via Rockset console

More information provided by the system vendor

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.