DBMS > Firebird vs. IBM Db2 vs. mSQL vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. IBM Db2 vs. mSQL vs. SQLite

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

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

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	1.27
Rank	#167	Overall
	#77	Relational DBMS

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

www.firebirdsql.org

www.ibm.com/products/db2

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Firebird Foundation

IBM

Hughes Technologies

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1983

host version

1994

2000

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

12.1, October 2016

4.4, October 2021

3.46.0 (23 May 2024), May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

free version is available

commercial

free licenses can be provided

Open Source

Public Domain

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.

Implementation language

C and C++

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

server-less

Data scheme

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

yes

via file-system locks

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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