DBMS > Firebird vs. Informix vs. Lovefield vs. Memcached vs. RDF4J

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. Informix vs. Lovefield vs. Memcached vs. RDF4J

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

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

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

RDF store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	19.42
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Website

www.firebirdsql.org

www.ibm.com/products/informix

google.github.io/lovefield

www.memcached.org

rdf4j.org

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

rdf4j.org/documentation

Developer

Firebird Foundation

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Google

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1984

2014

2003

2004

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

14.10.FC5, November 2020

2.1.12, February 2017

1.6.25, March 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

BSD license

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

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++

C, C++ and Java

JavaScript

Java

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

RDF Schemas

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

JavaScript

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

Java
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

yes

Triggers

yes

Using read-only observers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

none

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

Isolation support depends on the API used

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

User concepts

Access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

More information provided by the system vendor

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