DBMS > FoundationDB vs. ObjectBox vs. Realm vs. SQLite vs. Virtuoso

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. ObjectBox vs. Realm vs. SQLite 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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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.

Lightweight, fast on-device database for IoT, Mobile and Embedded devices, persisting and synchronising objects and vectors

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

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

Object oriented DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.06
Rank	#185	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	1.29
Rank	#166	Overall
	#5	Object oriented DBMS
	#7	Vector DBMS

Score	7.41
Rank	#52	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	111.41
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Score	4.27
Rank	#73	Overall
	#13	Document stores
	#4	Graph DBMS
	#2	Native XML DBMS
	#39	Relational DBMS
	#2	RDF stores
	#9	Search engines

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

github.com/objectbox
objectbox.io

realm.io

www.sqlite.org

virtuoso.openlinksw.com

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

docs.objectbox.io

realm.io/docs

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

docs.openlinksw.com/virtuoso

Developer

FoundationDB

ObjectBox Limited

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Dwayne Richard Hipp

OpenLink Software

Initial release

2013

2017

2014

2000

1998

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

4.0 (May 2024)

3.46.0 (23 May 2024), May 2024

7.2.11, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Bindings are released under Apache 2.0

Apache License 2.0

Open Source

Public Domain

Open Source

GPLv2, extended commercial license available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Android
Any POSIX system
Docker
iOS
Linux
macOS
QNX
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

server-less

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

dynamic column types

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, plus "flex" map-like types

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

yes

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

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary native API

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

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

C
C++
Dart (Flutter)
Go
Java
Kotlin
Python
Swift

.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

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

yes

Virtuoso PL

Triggers

yes

Change Listeners

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Data sync between devices allowing occasional connected databases to work completely offline

none

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

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

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

In-Memory realm

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes

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

Virtuoso is a modern multi-model RDBMS for managing data represented as tabular relations...
» more

Competitive advantages

Performance & Scale — as exemplified by DBpedia and the LOD Cloud it spawned, i.e.,...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Used for — Analytics/BI Conceptual Data Virtualization Enterprise Knowledge Graphs...
» more

Key customers

Broad use across enterprises and governments including — European Union (EU) US Government...
» more

Market metrics

Largest installed-base of Multi-Model RDBMS for AI-friendly Knowledge Graphs Platform...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Available in both Commercial Enterprise and Open Source (GPL v2) Editions Feature...
» more

News

The on-device Vector Database for Android and Java
29 May 2024

Vector search: making sense of search queries
29 May 2024

Python on-device Vector and Object Database for Local AI
28 May 2024

Evolution of search: traditional vs vector search
23 May 2024

On-device Vector Database for Dart/Flutter
21 May 2024

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.