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DBMS > Firebird vs. MariaDB vs. PostgreSQL

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. MariaDB vs. PostgreSQL

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameFirebird  Xexclude from comparisonMariaDB  Xexclude from comparisonPostgreSQL  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionFirebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBaseMySQL 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.Widely used open source RDBMS infoDeveloped as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL
Primary database modelRelational DBMSRelational DBMSRelational DBMS infowith object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Graph DBMS infowith OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS
Document store
Graph DBMS infowith Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS infowith pgvector extension
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score16.66
Rank#33  Overall
#20  Relational DBMS
Score93.61
Rank#14  Overall
#10  Relational DBMS
Score674.32
Rank#4  Overall
#4  Relational DBMS
Websitewww.firebirdsql.orgmariadb.com infoSite of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org infoSite of MariaDB Foundation
www.postgresql.org
Technical documentationwww.firebirdsql.org/­en/­reference-manualsmariadb.com/­kb/­en/­librarywww.postgresql.org/­docs
DeveloperFirebird FoundationMariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server) infoThe lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL
PostgreSQL Global Development Group infowww.postgresql.org/­developer
Initial release2000 infoAs fork of Borland's InterBase2009 infoFork of MySQL, which was first released in 19951989 info1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL
Current release5.0.1, August 202411.5.2, August 202416.4, August 2024
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoInitial Developer's Public LicenseOpen Source infoGPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription availableOpen Source infoBSD
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenonono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

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Implementation languageC and C++C and C++C
Server operating systemsAIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less infoFirebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows
FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows infoColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows
Data schemeyesyes infoDynamic columns are supportedyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.yesyes infospecific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.
Secondary indexesyesyesyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLyesyes infowith proprietary extensionsyes infostandard with numerous extensions
APIs and other access methodsADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC infoJaybird
ODBC
OLE DB
ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API
ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects
Supported programming languagesC
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript infoNode.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl
.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java infoJDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresPSQLyes infoPL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3user defined functions inforealized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.
Triggersyesyesyes
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesnoneseveral options for horizontal partitioning and Shardingpartitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesSource-replica replicationMulti-source replication
Source-replica replication
Source-replica replication infoother methods possible by using 3rd party extensions
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnonono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyImmediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyesyes infonot for MyISAM storage engineyes
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACIDACID infonot for MyISAM storage engineACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayes infoFeatures a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writersyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyes infonot for in-memory storage engineyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yes infowith MEMORY storage engineno
User concepts infoAccess controlUsers with fine-grained authorization conceptfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardfine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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