DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Realm vs. Snowflake vs. SurrealDB

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Realm vs. Snowflake vs. SurrealDB

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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

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

A fully ACID transactional, developer-friendly, multi-model DBMS

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

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

Score	13.64
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	7.41
Rank	#52	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	1.02
Rank	#190	Overall
	#33	Document stores
	#18	Graph DBMS

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

realm.io

www.snowflake.com

surrealdb.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

realm.io/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

surrealdb.com/docs

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Snowflake Computing Inc.

SurrealDB Ltd

Initial release

2012

2014

2022

Current release

v1.5.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

commercial

Open Source

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

Rust

Server operating systems

hosted

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

GraphQL
RESTful HTTP API
WebSocket

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Deno
Go
JavaScript (Node.js)
Rust

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

user defined functions

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Change Listeners

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

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

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

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

yes

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

yes, based on authentication and database rules

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