DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. PostGIS vs. Redis vs. Solr vs. Tarantool

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. PostGIS vs. Redis vs. Solr vs. Tarantool

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.

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

A widely used distributed, scalable search engine based on Apache Lucene

In-memory computing platform with a flexible data schema for efficiently building high-performance applications

Primary database model

Document store

Spatial DBMS

Key-value store

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Search engine

Document store
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

Spatial DBMS

with Tarantool/GIS extension

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

Score	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	21.72
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Score	155.94
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Score	41.02
Rank	#24	Overall
	#3	Search engines

Score	1.67
Rank	#143	Overall
	#25	Document stores
	#25	Key-value stores
	#65	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

postgis.net/documentation

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

solr.apache.org/resources.html

www.tarantool.io/en/doc

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

2012

2005

2009

2006

2008

Current release

3.4.2, February 2024

7.2.5, May 2024

9.6.1, May 2024

2.10.0, May 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

GPL v2.0

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

BSD-2, source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Tarantool 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.

Aiven for Redis: Fully managed in-memory key-value store for all your caching and speedy lookup needs.

Implementation language

Java

C and C++

Server operating systems

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

All OS with a Java VM

runs as a servlet in servlet container (e.g. Tomcat, Jetty is included)

BSD
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Dynamic Fields enables on-the-fly addition of new fields

Flexible data schema: relational definition for tables with ability to store json-like documents in columns

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

yes

supports customizable data types and automatic typing

string, double, decimal, uuid, integer, blob, boolean, datetime

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

with RediSearch module

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with RediSQL module

Solr Parallel SQL Interface

Full-featured ANSI SQL support

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Open binary protocol

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

.Net
Erlang
Java
JavaScript
any language that supports sockets and either XML or JSON
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#
C++
Erlang
Go
Java
JavaScript
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Rust

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

user defined functions

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

Java plugins

Lua, C and SQL stored procedures

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

yes

User configurable commands triggered on index changes

yes, before/after data modification events, on replication events, client session events

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

Sharding

Sharding, partitioned with virtual buckets by user defined affinity key. Live resharding for scale up and scale down without maintenance downtime.

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

yes

Asynchronous replication with multi-master option
Configurable replication topology (full-mesh, chain, star)
Synchronous quorum replication (with Raft)

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

through RedisGears

spark-solr: github.com/lucidworks/spark-solr and streaming expressions to reduce

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
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

Eventual Consistency

Casual consistency across sharding partitions
Eventual consistency within replicaset partition

when using asyncronous replication
Immediate Consistency within single instance
Sequential consistency including linearizable read within replicaset partition

when using Raft

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

optimistic locking

ACID, with serializable isolation and linearizable read (within partition); Configurable MVCC (within partition); No cross-shard distributed transactions

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

yes

yes, cooperative multitasking

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

yes

yes, write ahead logging

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

yes, full featured in-memory storage engine with persistence

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

yes

Access Control Lists
Mutual TLS authentication for Tarantol Enterprise
Password based authentication
Role-based access control (RBAC) and LDAP for Tarantol Enterprise
Users and Roles

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