DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. PostgreSQL vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. PostgreSQL vs. SQLite

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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

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	18.80
Rank	#38	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	618.00
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	138.87
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.postgresql.org

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

www.postgresql.org/docs

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2012

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2000

Current release

14.4, June 2022

3.39.1 (13 July 2022), July 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

BSD

Open Source

Public Domain

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

Server operating systems

hosted

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard with numerous extensions

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

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

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

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

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.

Related products and services

3rd parties

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EDB: BigAnimal is fully-managed PostgreSQL in the cloud from the database fanatics at EDB.
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The State of PostgreSQL 2022 survey is now open!
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Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres: An Enterprise Grade PostgreSQL with the flexibility of a hybrid cloud solution combined with industry leading security, availability and performance.
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Navicat for SQLite is a powerful and comprehensive SQLite GUI that provides a complete set of functions for database management and development.
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We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources

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