DBMS > Firebird vs. Ingres vs. Interbase vs. PostgreSQL vs. Tkrzw

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. Ingres vs. Interbase vs. PostgreSQL vs. Tkrzw

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Well established RDBMS

Light-weight proven RDBMS

originally from Borland

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

A concept of libraries, allowing an application program to store and query key-value pairs in a file. Successor of Tokyo Cabinet and Kyoto Cabinet

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

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

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	4.11
Rank	#81	Overall
	#44	Relational DBMS

Score	4.61
Rank	#72	Overall
	#39	Relational DBMS

Score	645.54
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#60	Key-value stores

Website

www.firebirdsql.org

www.actian.com/databases/ingres

www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

www.postgresql.org

dbmx.net/tkrzw

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

docs.actian.com/ingres

docs.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

www.postgresql.org/docs

Developer

Firebird Foundation

Actian Corporation

Embarcadero

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

Mikio Hirabayashi

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1974

originally developed at University Berkely in early 1970s

1984

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2020

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

11.2, May 2022

InterBase 2020, December 2019

16.3, May 2024

0.9.3, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

Open Source

BSD

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

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.

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Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

AIX
HP Open VMS
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Android
iOS
Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
macOS

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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.

but tools for importing/exporting data from/to XML-files available

export as XML data possible

yes

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard with numerous extensions

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

.NET Client API
JDBC
ODBC
proprietary protocol (OpenAPI)

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

C++
Java
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

yes

Interbase procedure and trigger language

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning

Ingres Star to access multiple databases simultaneously

none

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

Ingres Replicator

Interbase Change Views

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

yes

MVCC

yes

Multiversion concurreny control

yes

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

using specific database classes

User concepts

Access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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