DBMS > Firebird vs. MySQL vs. PostGIS vs. Realm vs. SAP IQ

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. MySQL vs. PostGIS vs. Realm vs. SAP IQ

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Widely used open source RDBMS

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

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

Columnar RDBMS optimized for Big Data analytics

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Spatial DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

column-oriented

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	22.69
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	2.75
Rank	#104	Overall
	#53	Relational DBMS

Website

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sybase-iq-big-data-management.html

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

dev.mysql.com/doc

postgis.net/documentation

realm.io/docs

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_IQ

Developer

Firebird Foundation

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

SAP, formerly Sybase

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1995

2005

2014

1994

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

8.4.0, April 2024

3.4.2, February 2024

16.1 SPS04, April 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

GPL v2.0

Open Source

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C and C++

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

C
C#
C++
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

yes

proprietary syntax

user defined functions

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

yes

Triggers

yes

Change Listeners

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

yes

based on PostgreSQL

none

shared disk or shared nothing architectures with SAP IQ Multiplexer

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

based on PostgreSQL

none

SAP/Sybase Replication Server

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

no user groups or roles

yes

based on PostgreSQL

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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