DBMS > Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. GigaSpaces vs. Oracle vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. GigaSpaces vs. Oracle vs. Realm

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

High performance in-memory data grid platform, powering three products: Smart Cache, Smart ODS (Operational Data Store), Smart Augmented Transactions

Widely used RDBMS

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Document store
Object oriented DBMS

Values are user defined objects

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Graph DBMS
Search engine

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

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

Score	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	1.06
Rank	#185	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	1.03
Rank	#188	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#6	Object oriented DBMS

Score	1244.08
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	7.41
Rank	#52	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Website

www.firebirdsql.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.gigaspaces.com

www.oracle.com/database

realm.io

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

apple.github.io/foundationdb

docs.gigaspaces.com/latest/landing.html

docs.oracle.com/en/database

realm.io/docs

Developer

Firebird Foundation

FoundationDB

Gigaspaces Technologies

Oracle

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2013

2000

1980

2014

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

6.2.28, November 2020

15.5, September 2020

23c, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial licenses available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Java, C++, .Net

C and C++

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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.

XML can be used for describing objects metadata

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

supported in specific SQL layer only

SQL-99 for query and DML statements

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

GigaSpaces LRMI
Hibernate
JCache
JDBC
JPA
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

.Net
C++
Java
Python
Scala

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

in SQL-layer only

yes

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

yes, event driven architecture

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes

Multi-source replication

synchronous or asynchronous
Source-replica replication

synchronous or asynchronous

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Map-Reduce pattern can be built with XAP task executors

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable: ALL, QUORUM, ANY

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

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

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

yes

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Role-based access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

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