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Couchbase vs Firebase: What are the differences?
Couchbase: Document-Oriented NoSQL Database. Developed as an alternative to traditionally inflexible SQL databases, the Couchbase NoSQL database is built on an open source foundation and architected to help developers solve real-world problems and meet high scalability demands; Firebase: The Realtime App Platform. Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.
Couchbase belongs to "Databases" category of the tech stack, while Firebase can be primarily classified under "Realtime Backend / API".
Some of the features offered by Couchbase are:
- JSON document database
- N1QL (SQL-like query language)
- Secondary Indexing
On the other hand, Firebase provides the following key features:
- Add the Firebase library to your app and get access to a shared data structure. Any changes made to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.
- Firebase apps can be written entirely with client-side code, update in real-time out-of-the-box, interoperate well with existing services, scale automatically, and provide strong data security.
- Data Accessibility- Data is stored as JSON in Firebase. Every piece of data has its own URL which can be used in Firebase's client libraries and as a REST endpoint. These URLs can also be entered into a browser to view the data and watch it update in real-time.
"Flexible data model, easy scalability, extremely fast" is the primary reason why developers consider Couchbase over the competitors, whereas "Realtime backend made easy" was stated as the key factor in picking Firebase.
According to the StackShare community, Firebase has a broader approval, being mentioned in 859 company stacks & 997 developers stacks; compared to Couchbase, which is listed in 45 company stacks and 21 developer stacks.
We are starting to work on a web-based platform aiming to connect artists (clients) and professional freelancers (service providers). In-app, timeline-based, real-time communication between users (& storing it), file transfers, and push notifications are essential core features. We are considering using Node.js, ExpressJS, React, MongoDB stack with Socket.IO & Apollo, or maybe using Real-Time Database and functionalities of Firebase.
I would recommend looking hard into Firebase for this project, especially if you do not have dedicated full-stack or backend members on your team.
The real time database, as you mentioned, is a great option, but I would also look into Firestore. Similar to RTDB, it adds more functions and some cool methods as well. Also, another great thing about Firebase is you have easy access to storage and dead simple auth as well.
Node.js Express MongoDB Socket.IO and Apollo are great technologies as well, and may be the better option if you do not wish to cede as much control to third parties in your application.
Overall, I say if you wish to focus more time developing your React application instead of other parts of your stack, Firebase is a great way to do that.
Hello Noam 👋,
I suggest taking a look at Ably, it has all the realtime features you need and the platform is designed to guarantee critical functionality at scale.
Here is an in depth comparison between Ably and Firebase
Hey Noam,
I would recommend you to take a look into 8base. It has features you've requested, also relation database and GraphQL API which will help you to develop rapidly.
Thanks, Ilya
We Have thousands of .pdf docs generated from the same form but with lots of variability. We need to extract data from open text and more important - from tables inside the docs. The output of Couchbase/Mongo will be one row per document for backend processing. ADOBE renders the tables in an unusable form.
I prefer MongoDB due to own experience with migration of old archive of pdf and meta-data to a new “archive”. The biggest advantage is speed of filters output - a new archive is way faster and reliable then the old one - but also the the easy programming of MongoDB with many code snippets and examples available. I have no personal experience so far with Couchbase. From the architecture point of view both options are OK - go for the one you like.
I would like to suggest MongoDB or ArangoDB (can't choose both, so ArangoDB). MongoDB is more mature, but ArangoDB is more interesting if you will need to bring graph database ideas to solution. For example if some data or some documents are interlinked, then probably ArangoDB is a best solution.
To process tables we used Abbyy software stack. It's great on table extraction.
If you can select text with mouse drag in PDF. Use pdftotext it is fast! You can install it on server with command "apt-get install poppler-utils". Use it like "pdftotext -layout /path-to-your-file". In same folder it will make text file with line by line content. There is few classes on git stacks that you can use, also.
We implemented our first large scale EPR application from naologic.com using CouchDB .
Very fast, replication works great, doesn't consume much RAM, queries are blazing fast but we found a problem: the queries were very hard to write, it took a long time to figure out the API, we had to go and write our own @nodejs library to make it work properly.
It lost most of its support. Since then, we migrated to Couchbase and the learning curve was steep but all worth it. Memcached indexing out of the box, full text search works great.
Pros of Couchbase
- High performance18
- Flexible data model, easy scalability, extremely fast18
- Mobile app support9
- You can query it with Ansi-92 SQL7
- All nodes can be read/write6
- Equal nodes in cluster, allowing fast, flexible changes5
- Both a key-value store and document (JSON) db5
- Open source, community and enterprise editions5
- Automatic configuration of sharding4
- Local cache capability4
- Easy setup3
- Linearly scalable, useful to large number of tps3
- Easy cluster administration3
- Cross data center replication3
- SDKs in popular programming languages3
- Elasticsearch connector3
- Web based management, query and monitoring panel3
- Map reduce views2
- DBaaS available2
- NoSQL2
- Buckets, Scopes, Collections & Documents1
- FTS + SQL together1
Pros of Firebase
- Realtime backend made easy371
- Fast and responsive270
- Easy setup242
- Real-time215
- JSON191
- Free134
- Backed by google128
- Angular adaptor83
- Reliable68
- Great customer support36
- Great documentation32
- Real-time synchronization25
- Mobile friendly21
- Rapid prototyping19
- Great security14
- Automatic scaling12
- Freakingly awesome11
- Super fast development8
- Angularfire is an amazing addition!8
- Chat8
- Firebase hosting6
- Built in user auth/oauth6
- Awesome next-gen backend6
- Ios adaptor6
- Speed of light4
- Very easy to use4
- Great3
- It's made development super fast3
- Brilliant for startups3
- Free hosting2
- Cloud functions2
- JS Offline and Sync suport2
- Low battery consumption2
- .net2
- The concurrent updates create a great experience2
- Push notification2
- I can quickly create static web apps with no backend2
- Great all-round functionality2
- Free authentication solution2
- Easy Reactjs integration1
- Google's support1
- Free SSL1
- CDN & cache out of the box1
- Easy to use1
- Large1
- Faster workflow1
- Serverless1
- Good Free Limits1
- Simple and easy1
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Cons of Couchbase
- Terrible query language3
Cons of Firebase
- Can become expensive31
- No open source, you depend on external company16
- Scalability is not infinite15
- Not Flexible Enough9
- Cant filter queries7
- Very unstable server3
- No Relational Data3
- Too many errors2
- No offline sync2
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