DBMS > Firebird vs. HarperDB vs. Kinetica vs. MariaDB vs. MySQL

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. HarperDB vs. Kinetica vs. MariaDB vs. MySQL

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.

Fully vectorized database across both GPUs and CPUs

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.

Widely used open source RDBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	0.55
Rank	#248	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	0.64
Rank	#236	Overall
	#109	Relational DBMS

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Website

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

www.mysql.com

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

docs.harperdb.io/docs

docs.kinetica.com

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

dev.mysql.com/doc

Developer

Firebird Foundation

HarperDB

Kinetica

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

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2017

2012

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

1995

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

3.1, August 2021

7.1, August 2021

11.3.2, February 2024

8.4.0, April 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

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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.

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

Implementation language

C and C++

Node.js

C, C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X

Linux

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

dynamic schema

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

yes

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like data manipulation statements

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

with proprietary extensions

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

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP 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 (Node.js)
Python

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

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
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

user defined functions

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

triggers when inserted values for one or more columns fall within a specified range

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

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

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

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

GPU vRAM or System RAM

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

yes

User concepts

Access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Access rights for users and roles

Access rights for users and roles on table level

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
» more

Competitive advantages

MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
» more

Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
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Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
» more

Market metrics

MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
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Licensing and pricing models

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
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