DBMS > Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. MariaDB

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. MariaDB

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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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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.

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	3.26
Rank	#92	Overall
	#13	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Website

www.firebirdsql.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/bigtable

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

apple.github.io/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

Developer

Firebird Foundation

FoundationDB

Google

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2013

2015

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

6.2.28, November 2020

11.3.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

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.

STACKIT MariaDB offers MariaDB in a fully managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

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

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

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

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

in SQL-layer only

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic single-row operations

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

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

not for in-memory storage engine

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

User concepts

Access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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