DBMS > FoundationDB vs. Lovefield vs. Realm vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. Lovefield vs. Realm vs. SQLite

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

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

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Score	0.97
Rank	#191	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#87	Relational DBMS

Score	0.22
Rank	#306	Overall
	#138	Relational DBMS

Score	7.18
Rank	#52	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	103.35
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

google.github.io/lovefield

realm.io

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

realm.io/docs

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

FoundationDB

Google

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2013

2014

2000

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

2.1.12, February 2017

3.46.1 (13 August 2024), August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Public Domain

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

JavaScript

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

JavaScript

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

Using read-only observers

yes

Change Listeners

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

none

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

using MemoryDB

yes

In-Memory realm

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes

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