DBMS > FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Oracle Rdb vs. RethinkDB vs. SwayDB

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Oracle Rdb vs. RethinkDB vs. SwayDB

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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.

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.

An embeddable, non-blocking, type-safe key-value store for single or multiple disks and in-memory storage

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Document store

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.07
Rank	#188	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#86	Relational DBMS

Score	2.89
Rank	#105	Overall
	#53	Relational DBMS

Score	1.08
Rank	#187	Overall
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	2.84
Rank	#106	Overall
	#19	Document stores

Score	0.04
Rank	#373	Overall
	#57	Key-value stores

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/spanner

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

rethinkdb.com

swaydb.simer.au

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

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

rethinkdb.com/docs

Developer

FoundationDB

Google

Oracle, originally developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

Simer Plaha

Initial release

2013

2017

1984

2009

2018

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

7.4.1.1, 2021

2.4.1, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

GNU Affero GPL V3.0

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++

Scala

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

HP Open VMS

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

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

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

yes

string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

APIs and other access methods

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

community-supported driver
C#

community-supported driver
C++

community-supported driver
Clojure

community-supported driver
Dart

community-supported driver
Erlang

community-supported driver
Go

community-supported driver
Haskell

community-supported driver
Java

official driver
JavaScript (Node.js)

official driver
Lisp

community-supported driver
Lua

community-supported driver
Objective-C

community-supported driver
Perl

community-supported driver
PHP

community-supported driver
Python

official driver
Ruby

official driver
Scala

community-supported driver

Java
Kotlin
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

Triggers

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

range based

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

Source-replica replication

none

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

yes, on a single node

Atomic single-document operations

Atomic execution of operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC based

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)

yes

users and table-level permissions

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

Related products and services

We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

Meet some database management systems you are likely to hear more about in the future
4 August 2014, Paul Andlinger

show all

Recent citations in the news

FoundationDB team's new venture, Antithesis, raises $47M to enhance software testing
13 February 2024, SiliconANGLE News

Antithesis raises $47M to launch an automated testing platform for software
13 February 2024, TechCrunch

Deno adds scaleable messaging with new Queues feature, sparks debate about proprietary services • DEVCLASS
28 September 2023, DevClass

IBM Cloudant ends backing of FoundationDB version of CouchDB
15 March 2022, The Register

FoundationDB, a very interesting NoSQL database owned by Apple, is now an open-source project
19 April 2018, GeekWire

provided by Google News

Google Improves Cloud Spanner: More Compute and Storage without Price Increase
14 October 2023, InfoQ.com

Google turns up the heat on AWS, claims Cloud Spanner is half the cost of DynamoDB
11 October 2023, TechCrunch

Google makes its Cloud Spanner database service faster and more cost-efficient
11 October 2023, SiliconANGLE News

Google Spanner: When Do You Need to Move to It?
11 September 2023, hackernoon.com

Google Cloud Spanner competes directly with Amazon DynamoDB
12 October 2023, Techzine Europe

provided by Google News

Oracle Adds New AI-Enabling Features To MySQL HeatWave
23 March 2023, Forbes

Oracle Business Model - How Oracle Makes Money?
12 June 2023, Business Model Analyst

Should we all consolidate databases for the storage benefits? Reg vultures deploy DevOps, zoos, haircuts
18 September 2020, The Register

2013 Data Science Salary Survey – O'Reilly
4 May 2013, O'Reilly Media

provided by Google News

MongoDB: The Popular Database for IoT
15 August 2023, Open Source For You

How to Use RethinkDB with Node.js Applications — SitePoint
16 December 2015, SitePoint

Stripe acquires team behind NoSQL database startup RethinkDB
5 October 2016, VentureBeat

RethinkDB is dead, and MongoDB isn't what killed it
24 January 2017, TechRepublic

Review: RethinkDB rethinks real-time Web apps
23 September 2015, InfoWorld

provided by Google News

Share this page