DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. MySQL vs. ScyllaDB vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. MySQL vs. ScyllaDB vs. TimescaleDB

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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

Cassandra and DynamoDB compatible wide column store

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

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Wide column store

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Key-value store

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	4.75
Rank	#68	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.mysql.com

www.scylladb.com

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

dev.mysql.com/doc

docs.scylladb.com

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

ScyllaDB

Timescale

Initial release

2012

1995

2015

2017

Current release

8.4.0, April 2024

ScyllaDB Open Source 5.4.1, January 2024

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

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Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

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

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

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

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

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

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

proprietary syntax

yes, Lua

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

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

Sharding

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

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

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

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

in-memory tables

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

Access rights for users can be defined per object

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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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