DBMS > FoundationDB vs. Interbase vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Postgres-XL vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. Interbase vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Postgres-XL vs. TimescaleDB

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Light-weight proven RDBMS

originally from Borland

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational 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	4.61
Rank	#72	Overall
	#39	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.49
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.postgres-xl.org

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

docs.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

docs.timescale.com

Developer

FoundationDB

Embarcadero

Microsoft

Timescale

Initial release

2013

1984

1989

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2017

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

InterBase 2020, December 2019

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

10 R1, October 2018

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Android
iOS
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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.

export as XML data possible

yes

XML type, but no XML query functionality

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

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

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
Object Pascal
PHP
Ruby

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

yes

Interbase procedure and trigger language

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

user defined functions

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

horizontal partitioning

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Interbase Change Views

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

MVCC

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Multiversion concurreny control

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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