DBMS > Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. Informix vs. OpenSearch

System Properties Comparison Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Google Cloud Datastore vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. Informix vs. OpenSearch

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

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

Cloud Firestore is an auto-scaling document database for storing, syncing, and querying data for mobile and web apps. It offers seamless integration with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products.

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

Primary database model

Key-value store
Wide column store

Document store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Search engine

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Vector DBMS

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

Score	3.15
Rank	#95	Overall
	#14	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Score	4.36
Rank	#72	Overall
	#12	Document stores

Score	7.36
Rank	#53	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	16.03
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Website

cloud.google.com/bigtable

cloud.google.com/datastore

firebase.google.com/products/firestore

www.ibm.com/products/informix

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

Technical documentation

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

cloud.google.com/datastore/docs

firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

opensearch.org/docs/latest

Developer

Google

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Amazon Web Services

Initial release

2015

2008

2017

1984

2021

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

2.5.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

Java

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes, details here

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language (GQL)

yes

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

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

Android
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
Python

.Net
C
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

using Google App Engine

yes, Firebase Rules & Cloud Functions

yes

Triggers

Callbacks using the Google Apps Engine

yes, with Cloud Functions

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

Multi-source replication using Paxos

Multi-source replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Using Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

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

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

via ReferenceProperties or Ancestor paths

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomic single-row operations

ACID

Serializable Isolation within Transactions, Read Committed outside of Transactions

yes

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)

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management. Security Rules for 3rd party authentication using Firebase Auth.

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
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Competitive advantages

Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
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Typical application scenarios

The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
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Licensing and pricing models

The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
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