DBMS > FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Postgres-XL vs. Snowflake vs. Virtuoso

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Postgres-XL vs. Snowflake vs. Virtuoso

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

Automatically scaling NoSQL Database as a Service (DBaaS) on the Google Cloud Platform

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Virtuoso is a multi-model hybrid-RDBMS that supports management of data represented as relational tables and/or property graphs

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Document store

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Native XML DBMS
Relational DBMS
RDF store
Search engine

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	4.47
Rank	#76	Overall
	#12	Document stores

Score	0.49
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	4.26
Rank	#78	Overall
	#13	Document stores
	#4	Graph DBMS
	#2	Native XML DBMS
	#42	Relational DBMS
	#2	RDF stores
	#9	Search engines

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/datastore

www.postgres-xl.org

www.snowflake.com

virtuoso.openlinksw.com

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/datastore/docs

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

docs.openlinksw.com/virtuoso

Developer

FoundationDB

Google

Snowflake Computing Inc.

OpenLink Software

Initial release

2013

2008

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2014

1998

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

10 R1, October 2018

7.2.11, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Mozilla public license

commercial

Open Source

GPLv2, extended commercial license available

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++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
macOS

hosted

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

schema-free

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

yes

SQL - 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

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

yes, details here

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

SQL-like query language (GQL)

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

yes

SQL-92, SQL-200x, SQL-3, SQLX

APIs and other access methods

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

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 languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

using Google App Engine

user defined functions

yes

Virtuoso PL

Triggers

Callbacks using the Google Apps Engine

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication using Paxos

yes

Chain, star, and bi-directional replication
Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on type of query and configuration

Strong Consistency is default for entity lookups and queries within an Entity Group (but can instead be made eventually consistent). Other queries are always eventual consistent.

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

via ReferenceProperties or Ancestor paths

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Serializable Isolation within Transactions, Read Committed outside of Transactions

ACID

MVCC

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

Fine-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

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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