DBMS > Firebird vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Kdb vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

High performance Time Series DBMS

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	7.55
Rank	#53	Overall
	#3	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Website

www.firebirdsql.org

cloud.google.com/spanner

kx.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

code.kx.com

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

Firebird Foundation

Google

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Microsoft

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2017

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2014

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

3.6, May 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

free 32-bit version

commercial

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.

Implementation language

C and C++

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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

table attribute 'grouped'

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like query language (q)

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C
C#
C++
Go
J
Java
JavaScript
Lua
MatLab
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Scala

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

user defined functions

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

with views

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

similar paradigm used for internal processing

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

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

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)

rights management via user accounts

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
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Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
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Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
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Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
» more

Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
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Licensing and pricing models

upon request
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.