DBMS > Firebird vs. Kdb vs. Lovefield vs. RocksDB vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. Kdb vs. Lovefield vs. RocksDB vs. Sphinx

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

High performance Time Series DBMS

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Embeddable persistent key-value store optimized for fast storage (flash and RAM)

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Search engine

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

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

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

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

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	3.65
Rank	#85	Overall
	#11	Key-value stores

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

www.firebirdsql.org

kx.com

google.github.io/lovefield

rocksdb.org

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

code.kx.com

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

github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Firebird Foundation

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Google

Facebook, Inc.

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2014

2013

2001

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

3.6, May 2018

2.1.12, February 2017

8.11.4, April 2024

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

free 32-bit version

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

BSD

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence 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.

Implementation language

C and C++

JavaScript

C++

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

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

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Linux

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

table attribute 'grouped'

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language (q)

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

C++ API
Java API

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

JavaScript

C
C++
Go
Java
Perl
Python
Ruby

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

with views

Using read-only observers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning

none

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

none

yes

none

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

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

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

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

yes

User concepts

Access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

rights management via user accounts

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
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Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
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Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
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Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
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Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
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Licensing and pricing models

upon request
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