DBMS > Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. mSQL vs. Oracle vs. Postgres-XL

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. mSQL vs. Oracle vs. Postgres-XL

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

Widely used RDBMS

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

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

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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	1.27
Rank	#169	Overall
	#76	Relational DBMS

Score	1244.08
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	0.53
Rank	#254	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Website

www.firebirdsql.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

www.oracle.com/database

www.postgres-xl.org

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

apple.github.io/foundationdb

docs.oracle.com/en/database

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

Developer

Firebird Foundation

FoundationDB

Hughes Technologies

Oracle

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2013

1994

1980

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

6.2.28, November 2020

4.4, October 2021

23c, September 2023

10 R1, October 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

free licenses can be provided

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Mozilla public license

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++

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

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

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

Linux
macOS

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

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.

yes

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

supported in specific SQL layer only

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

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

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++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

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
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

in SQL-layer only

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

none

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

none

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

MVCC

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'

User concepts

Access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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