DBMS > Firebird vs. HarperDB vs. Interbase vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. HarperDB vs. Interbase vs. Snowflake

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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.

Light-weight proven RDBMS

originally from Borland

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational 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	4.08
Rank	#75	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

www.firebirdsql.org

www.harperdb.io

www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

docs.harperdb.io/docs

docs.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Firebird Foundation

HarperDB

Embarcadero

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2017

1984

2014

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

3.1, August 2021

InterBase 2020, December 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

free community edition available

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++

Node.js

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X

Android
iOS
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

dynamic schema

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

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.

export as XML data possible

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like data manipulation statements

yes

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
Object Pascal
PHP
Ruby

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

yes

Interbase procedure and trigger language

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

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

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

Interbase Change Views

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic execution of specific operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

yes

Multiversion concurreny control

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

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 and roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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