DBMS > etcd vs. Firebird vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Memcached vs. Redis

System Properties Comparison etcd vs. Firebird vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Memcached vs. Redis

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

Primary database model

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Secondary database models

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

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

Score	7.64
Rank	#54	Overall
	#5	Key-value stores

Score	21.06
Rank	#31	Overall
	#19	Relational DBMS

Score	2.73
Rank	#108	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	20.74
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Score	156.44
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Website

etcd.io
github.com/etcd-io/etcd

www.firebirdsql.org

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

www.memcached.org

redis.com
redis.io

Technical documentation

etcd.io/docs
github.com/etcd-io/etcd/tree/master/Documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

Developer

Firebird Foundation

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2010

2003

2009

Current release

3.4, August 2019

5.0.0, January 2024

1.6.25, March 2024

7.2.4, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

Open Source

BSD license

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

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.

Aiven for Redis: Fully managed in-memory key-value store for all your caching and speedy lookup needs.

Implementation language

C and C++

Erlang

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
Windows

experimental

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

with RediSearch module

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with RediSQL module

APIs and other access methods

gRPC
JSON over HTTP

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Proprietary protocol

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Tcl

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

Triggers

yes, watching key changes

yes

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

none

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Using Raft consensus algorithm to ensure data replication with strong consistency among multiple replicas.

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

through RedisGears

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

atomic operations within a document possible

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

yes

Optimistic locking

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

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 can be defined per database

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

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