DBMS > Firebird vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Oracle Rdb vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Oracle Rdb vs. Realm

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	1.08
Rank	#184	Overall
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Website

www.firebirdsql.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/rdb.html

realm.io

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/rdb-doc.html

realm.io/docs

Developer

Firebird Foundation

Microsoft

Oracle, originally developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2014

2010

1984

2014

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

V12

7.4.1.1, 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

Open Source

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

hosted

HP Open VMS

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free)

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language

yes

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

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

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

JavaScript

Transact SQL

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, with always 3 replicas available

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

yes, on a single node

ACID

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

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

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