DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Realm vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Realm 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.

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Score	13.15
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	6.76
Rank	#51	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	114.09
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

realm.io

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

realm.io/docs

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2012

2014

2000

Current release

3.46.1 (13 August 2024), August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

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.

Implementation language

Server operating systems

hosted

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

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'

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Change Listeners

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

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

In-Memory realm

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

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