DBMS > Firebird vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Rockset vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Rockset vs. TimesTen

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.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A scalable, reliable search and analytics service in the cloud, built on RocksDB

An in-memory SQL relational database that delivers microsecond response and high throughput for OLTP applications. TimesTen can be deployed as a standalone database or as a cache to a backend Oracle database.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS
Search engine

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

Score	19.46
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	2.69
Rank	#101	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Score	807.76
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	1.07
Rank	#180	Overall
	#31	Document stores

Score	1.26
Rank	#164	Overall
	#75	Relational DBMS

Website

www.firebirdsql.org

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

rockset.com

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

docs.rockset.com

docs.oracle.com/en/database/other-databases/timesten/index.html

Developer

Firebird Foundation

Google

Microsoft

Rockset

Oracle

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2017

1989

2019

1998

Current release

5.0.1, August 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

Release 22.1

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

hosted

IBM AIX Power PC 64-bit
Linux arm64
Linux x86-64
Solaris SPARC 64
Solaris SPARC/x86
Solaris x86-64

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

dynamic 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

ingestion from XML files supported

Secondary indexes

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

Read-only SQL queries, including JOINs

yes

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

HTTP REST

ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)
Pro*C/C++ programming interfaces
SQL and PL/SQL via JDBC

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C
C++
Java
Node.js
PL/SQL
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Automatic sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

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

ACID

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

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

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)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and organizations can be defined via Rockset console

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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