DBMS > Firebird vs. HarperDB vs. IBM Cloudant vs. jBASE vs. MariaDB

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. HarperDB vs. IBM Cloudant vs. jBASE vs. MariaDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

A robust multi-value DBMS comprising development tools and middleware

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	0.60
Rank	#244	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	2.75
Rank	#104	Overall
	#19	Document stores

Score	1.49
Rank	#156	Overall
	#3	Multivalue DBMS

Score	91.04
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Website

www.firebirdsql.org

www.harperdb.io

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

www.rocketsoftware.com/products/rocket-multivalue-application-development-platform/rocket-jbase

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

docs.harperdb.io/docs

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

docs.rocketsoftware.com/bundle?labelkey=jbase_5.9

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

Developer

Firebird Foundation

HarperDB

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

Rocket Software (formerly Zumasys)

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2017

2010

1991

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

3.1, August 2021

5.7

11.3.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

free community edition available

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

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.

STACKIT MariaDB offers MariaDB in a fully managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

C and C++

Node.js

Erlang

C and C++

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X

hosted

AIX
Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Data scheme

yes

dynamic schema

schema-free

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

optional

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like data manipulation statements

Embedded SQL for jBASE in BASIC

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
RESTful HTTP API
SOAP-based API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

.Net
Basic
Jabbascript
Java

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

Sharding

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic execution of specific operations

atomic operations within a document possible

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

yes

Optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

User concepts

Access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Access rights for users and roles

Access rights for users can be defined per database

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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