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DBMS > Firebird vs. PostgreSQL vs. SpatiaLite vs. Virtuoso

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. PostgreSQL vs. SpatiaLite vs. Virtuoso

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameFirebird  Xexclude from comparisonPostgreSQL  Xexclude from comparisonSpatiaLite  Xexclude from comparisonVirtuoso  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionFirebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBaseWidely used open source RDBMS infoDeveloped as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQLSpatial extension of SQLiteVirtuoso is a multi-model hybrid-RDBMS that supports management of data represented as relational tables and/or property graphs
Primary database modelRelational DBMSRelational DBMS infowith object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.Spatial DBMSDocument store
Graph DBMS
Native XML DBMS
Relational DBMS
RDF store
Search engine
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Graph DBMS infowith Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS infowith pgvector extension
Relational DBMSSpatial DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score20.82
Rank#30  Overall
#18  Relational DBMS
Score645.54
Rank#4  Overall
#4  Relational DBMS
Score1.60
Rank#149  Overall
#3  Spatial DBMS
Score4.26
Rank#78  Overall
#13  Document stores
#4  Graph DBMS
#2  Native XML DBMS
#42  Relational DBMS
#2  RDF stores
#9  Search engines
Websitewww.firebirdsql.orgwww.postgresql.orgwww.gaia-gis.it/­fossil/­libspatialite/­indexvirtuoso.openlinksw.com
Technical documentationwww.firebirdsql.org/­en/­reference-manualswww.postgresql.org/­docswww.gaia-gis.it/­gaia-sins/­spatialite_topics.htmldocs.openlinksw.com/­virtuoso
DeveloperFirebird FoundationPostgreSQL Global Development Group infowww.postgresql.org/­developerAlessandro FurieriOpenLink Software
Initial release2000 infoAs fork of Borland's InterBase1989 info1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL20081998
Current release5.0.0, January 202416.2, February 20245.0.0, August 20207.2.11, September 2023
License infoCommercial or Open SourceOpen Source infoInitial Developer's Public LicenseOpen Source infoBSDOpen Source infoMPL 1.1, GPL v2.0 or LGPL v2.1Open Source infoGPLv2, extended commercial license available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenononono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.
Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools.
Implementation languageC and C++CC++C
Server operating systemsAIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less infoFirebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows
server-lessAIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeyesyesyesyes infoSQL - Standard relational schema
RDF - Quad (S, P, O, G) or Triple (S, P, O)
XML - DTD, XML Schema
DAV - freeform filesystem objects, plus User Defined Types a/k/a Dynamic Extension Type
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyesyes
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.yes infospecific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.noyes
Secondary indexesyesyesyesyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLyesyes infostandard with numerous extensionsyesyes infoSQL-92, SQL-200x, SQL-3, SQLX
APIs and other access methodsADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC infoJaybird
ODBC
OLE DB
ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects
ADO.NET
GeoSPARQL
HTTP API
JDBC
Jena RDF API
ODBC
OLE DB
RDF4J API
RESTful HTTP API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SOAP webservices
SPARQL 1.1
WebDAV
XPath
XQuery
XSLT
Supported programming languagesC
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript infoNode.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java infoJDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl
.Net
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresPSQLuser defined functions inforealized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.noyes infoVirtuoso PL
Triggersyesyesyesyes
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesnonepartitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hashnoneyes
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesSource-replica replicationSource-replica replication infoother methods possible by using 3rd party extensionsnoneChain, star, and bi-directional replication
Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnononoyes
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyImmediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyesyesyesyes
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACIDACIDACIDACID
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayes infoFeatures a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writersyesyesyes
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyesyesyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.noyesyes
User concepts infoAccess controlUsers with fine-grained authorization conceptfine grained access rights according to SQL-standardnoFine-grained Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) in addition to typical coarse-grained Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) according to SQL-standard. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)
More information provided by the system vendor
FirebirdPostgreSQLSpatiaLiteVirtuoso
Specific characteristicsVirtuoso is a modern multi-model RDBMS for managing data represented as tabular relations...
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Competitive advantagesPerformance & Scale — as exemplified by DBpedia and the LOD Cloud it spawned, i.e.,...
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Typical application scenariosUsed for — Analytics/BI Conceptual Data Virtualization Enterprise Knowledge Graphs...
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Key customersBroad use across enterprises and governments including — European Union (EU) US Government...
» more
Market metricsLargest installed-base ​of Multi-Model RDBMS for AI-friendly Knowledge Graphs Platform...
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Licensing and pricing modelsAvailable in both Commercial Enterprise and Open Source (GPL v2) Editions Feature...
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More resources
FirebirdPostgreSQLSpatiaLiteVirtuoso
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