DBMS > Firebird vs. Interbase vs. Kdb vs. MariaDB

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. Interbase vs. Kdb vs. MariaDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Light-weight proven RDBMS

originally from Borland

High performance Time Series DBMS

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.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	4.61
Rank	#72	Overall
	#39	Relational DBMS

Score	7.55
Rank	#53	Overall
	#3	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Website

www.firebirdsql.org

www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

kx.com

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

docs.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

code.kx.com

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

Developer

Firebird Foundation

Embarcadero

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

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

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1984

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

InterBase 2020, December 2019

3.6, May 2018

11.3.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

free 32-bit version

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription 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.

Implementation language

C and C++

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Android
iOS
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Data scheme

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

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.

export as XML data possible

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

table attribute 'grouped'

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language (q)

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

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++
Delphi
Java
Object Pascal
PHP
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Go
J
Java
JavaScript
Lua
MatLab
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Scala

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

yes

Interbase procedure and trigger language

user defined functions

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

Triggers

yes

with views

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

Interbase Change Views

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

similar paradigm used for internal processing

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

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

Multiversion concurreny control

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

User concepts

Access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

rights management via user accounts

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
» more

MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
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Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
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MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
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Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
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Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
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Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
» more

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

Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
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MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
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Licensing and pricing models

upon request
» more

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.