DBMS > Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. Postgres-XL

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

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

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
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	16.66
Rank	#33	Overall
	#20	Relational DBMS

Score	0.89
Rank	#197	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#29	Key-value stores
	#92	Relational DBMS

Score	0.33
Rank	#270	Overall
	#123	Relational DBMS

Website

www.firebirdsql.org

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.postgres-xl.org

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

apple.github.io/foundationdb

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

Developer

Firebird Foundation

FoundationDB

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2013

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

Current release

5.0.1, August 2024

6.2.28, November 2020

10 R1, October 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C and C++

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

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

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

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

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

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

in SQL-layer only

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

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

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.

User concepts

Access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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More resources

Recent citations in the news

Firebird – Director, Business Intelligence (US)
23 October 2024, Music Business Worldwide

FBI issues national security warning to Gmail, Outlook email users
17 March 2025, MassLive

Exploring the Firebird Database
9 August 2023, Open Source For You

Firebird – Sr. Product Manager, Touring (Remote)
12 July 2024, Music Business Worldwide

12 Top Open Source Databases to Consider
1 May 2024, TechTarget

provided by Google News

Apple Acquires Durable Database Company FoundationDB
24 March 2015, TechCrunch

FoundationDB Record Layer: A Multi-Tenant Structured Datastore
25 July 2020, Apple Machine Learning Research

Apple-owned FoundationDB open sources the core technology at the heart of iCloud
19 April 2018, AppleInsider

FoundationDB team’s new venture, Antithesis, raises $47M to enhance software testing
13 February 2024, SiliconANGLE

IBM Cloudant pulls plan to fund new foundational layer for CouchDB
15 March 2022, theregister.com

provided by Google News

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