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DBMS > Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. QuestDB vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. FoundationDB vs. QuestDB vs. Sphinx

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameFirebird  Xexclude from comparisonFoundationDB  Xexclude from comparisonQuestDB  Xexclude from comparisonSphinx  Xexclude from comparison
Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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.
DescriptionFirebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBaseOrdered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.A high performance open source SQL database for time series dataOpen source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases
Primary database modelRelational DBMSDocument store infosupported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS infosupported via specific SQL-layer
Time Series DBMSSearch engine
Secondary database modelsRelational DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score20.50
Rank#30  Overall
#18  Relational DBMS
Score1.06
Rank#185  Overall
#31  Document stores
#28  Key-value stores
#85  Relational DBMS
Score2.70
Rank#105  Overall
#8  Time Series DBMS
Score5.95
Rank#55  Overall
#5  Search engines
Websitewww.firebirdsql.orggithub.com/­apple/­foundationdbquestdb.iosphinxsearch.com
Technical documentationwww.firebirdsql.org/­en/­reference-manualsapple.github.io/­foundationdbquestdb.io/­docssphinxsearch.com/­docs
DeveloperFirebird FoundationFoundationDBQuestDB Technology IncSphinx Technologies Inc.
Initial release2000 infoAs fork of Borland's InterBase201320142001
Current release5.0.0, January 20246.2.28, November 20203.5.1, February 2023
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoInitial Developer's Public LicenseOpen Source infoApache 2.0Open Source infoApache 2.0Open Source infoGPL version 2, commercial licence available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenononono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

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Implementation languageC and C++C++Java (Zero-GC), C++, RustC++
Server operating systemsAIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less infoFirebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows
Linux
OS X
Windows
Linux
macOS
Windows
FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeyesschema-free infosome layers support schemasyes infoschema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocolyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesno infosome layers support typingyesno
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.no
Secondary indexesyesnonoyes infofull-text index on all search fields
SQL infoSupport of SQLyessupported in specific SQL layer onlySQL with time-series extensionsSQL-like query language (SphinxQL)
APIs and other access methodsADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC infoJaybird
ODBC
OLE DB
HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Proprietary protocol
Supported programming languagesC
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript infoNode.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript infoNode.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift
C infoPostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust infoover HTTP
C++ infounofficial client library
Java
Perl infounofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby infounofficial client library
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresPSQLin SQL-layer onlynono
Triggersyesnonono
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesnoneShardinghorizontal partitioning (by timestamps)Sharding infoPartitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesSource-replica replicationyesSource-replica replication with eventual consistencynone
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnononono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemLinearizable consistencyImmediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyesin SQL-layer onlynono
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACIDACIDACID for single-table writesno
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayes infoFeatures a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writersyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyes infoThe original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yes infothrough memory mapped files
User concepts infoAccess controlUsers with fine-grained authorization conceptnono
More information provided by the system vendor
FirebirdFoundationDBQuestDBSphinx
Specific characteristicsRelational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more
Competitive advantagesHigh ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more
Typical application scenariosFinancial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more
Key customersBanks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more
Licensing and pricing modelsOpen source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more
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