Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

OrbitDB VS Google Cloud Bigtable

Compare OrbitDB VS Google Cloud Bigtable and see what are their differences

OrbitDB logo OrbitDB

OrbitDB is a serverless, distributed, peer-to-peer database.

Google Cloud Bigtable logo Google Cloud Bigtable

A high performance NoSQL database service for large analytical and operational workloads.
  • OrbitDB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-26
  • Google Cloud Bigtable Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-12

OrbitDB features and specs

  • Decentralization
    OrbitDB is a peer-to-peer database system built on top of IPFS, meaning it does not rely on a central server. This enhances data availability and resilience against censorship.
  • Offline-first Operation
    Since OrbitDB is built on IPFS, it can operate without a constant connection to the internet, allowing data access and changes even when offline.
  • Versioning and Immutability
    It provides built-in support for versioning and immutability of data, ensuring that historical records can be maintained and easily accessed.
  • Eventual Consistency
    OrbitDB uses eventual consistency, which means all nodes will eventually reach the same data state. This is suitable for applications tolerant to eventual consistency rather than immediate data consistency.
  • Community and Open Source
    As an open-source project, OrbitDB benefits from community contributions and transparency, allowing for improved security, auditing, and flexibility in modifications.

Possible disadvantages of OrbitDB

  • Complex Synchronization
    Handling data consistency and synchronization in a decentralized manner can be complex, which may result in increased development and maintenance efforts.
  • Performance Overhead
    Running on a peer-to-peer network can introduce performance overhead due to factors like data propagation delays and potential network instability.
  • Limited Ecosystem Support
    Compared to more established databases, OrbitDB has a more limited ecosystem of tools and integrations, potentially requiring more custom development work.
  • Learning Curve
    Developers may face a steeper learning curve due to the decentralized nature and unique characteristics of OrbitDB and IPFS.
  • Eventual Consistency Trade-offs
    While eventual consistency can be a pro, it also means that applications requiring strict immediate consistency could face challenges when using OrbitDB.

Google Cloud Bigtable features and specs

  • Scalability
    Google Cloud Bigtable is designed to scale horizontally to handle massive amounts of data across millions of rows and thousands of columns. This makes it ideal for applications needing to handle large datasets with high throughput.
  • Low Latency
    Bigtable is optimized for low-latency access to big data. It is capable of delivering real-time responses, which is beneficial for applications that require fast read and write operations.
  • Seamless Integration
    Bigtable integrates easily with other GCP services like Google Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and Dataflow, simplifying the development of complex applications that require various cloud services.
  • Managed Service
    As a managed service, Bigtable handles routine operations such as scaling, replication, and failure recovery, allowing users to focus on application development rather than infrastructure management.
  • Strong Consistency
    Bigtable provides strong consistency for read and write operations, ensuring that data is reliable and consistent across operations and query results.

Possible disadvantages of Google Cloud Bigtable

  • Complexity of Use
    Bigtable can be complex to set up and use effectively, especially for those who are unfamiliar with NoSQL databases or distributed systems.
  • Cost
    While scalable, the pricing can become expensive as your requirements grow, especially if you need high throughput and large storage capacities.
  • Limited Querying Capabilities
    Unlike relational databases, Bigtable has limited querying capabilities. It does not support SQL-like queries, making it less suitable for applications that require complex querying options.
  • Region-Specific Availability
    Bigtable is available only in certain regions, which might limit its use for global applications requiring multi-region deployments for latency optimization.
  • Learning Curve
    There's a significant learning curve for new users to understand Bigtable's architecture and its best practices, which can delay the development process.

OrbitDB videos

On Telemetry for InterPlanetary Systems (OrbitDB + IPFS)

Google Cloud Bigtable videos

Scalability Meetup @ Whitepages - Google Cloud BigTable

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to OrbitDB and Google Cloud Bigtable)
Databases
66 66%
34% 34
Relational Databases
71 71%
29% 29
NoSQL Databases
54 54%
46% 46
Network & Admin
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare OrbitDB and Google Cloud Bigtable

OrbitDB Reviews

We have no reviews of OrbitDB yet.
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Google Cloud Bigtable Reviews

7 Best NoSQL APIs
When businesses need to scale, they want to do so with limited downtime. The Google Cloud Bigtable provides horizontal Scaling in a matter of seconds without any downtime. To scale, cluster nodes are quickly added to increase your overall Bigtable cluster. Google even provides the option of scaling out only for a matter of hours, to handle a large load of requests. Once the...

Social recommendations and mentions

OrbitDB might be a bit more popular than Google Cloud Bigtable. We know about 7 links to it since March 2021 and only 6 links to Google Cloud Bigtable. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

OrbitDB mentions (7)

  • Show HN: TeaTime – static distributed library powered by SQLite, IPFS and GitHub
    > (I'm looking into using Helia so that users are also contributing nodes in the network) I had to look that term up I was reminded of https://github.com/orbitdb/orbitdb#readme which seems like it may be much less rolling your own parts. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • How to make a crowdsourced distributed metadata database?
    Both use OrbitDB: Peer-to-Peer Databases for the Decentralized Web. JavaScript. MIT license. repo. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Release: New features for Nalli
    I think a wallet-agnostic memo solution is definitely the way. Having wallets that end up (partly) incompatible is only gonna hurt the UX. Maybe a decentralised DB solution like OrbitDB or GunDB can be the best way forward, although I haven't dove deeply into the docs yet. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Building a decentralized database
    Checkout this https://github.com/orbitdb/orbit-db peer-to-peer database for the decentralized Web. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Any suggestions to build a decentralized web app?
    I want to build a decentralized social media web app for a personal project, and I'm thinking on using IPFS. What tool, API, or library can get me set up without writing smart contracts or using blockchain solutions? I've heard that GunDB or OrbitDB are useful libraries- is that true? What are your thoughts and suggestions? Source: over 3 years ago
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Google Cloud Bigtable mentions (6)

  • Vaultree and AlloyDB: the world's first Fully Homomorphic and Searchable Cloud Encryption Solution
    In my opinion, Google has built some fantastic database services like Bigtable and Spanner, which literally changed the industry for good, and I am eager to see how they will build upon this new service. With AlloyDB's disaggregated architecture, the dystopian world where I only pay for SQL databases per query and the stored data on GCP seems closer than ever. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Google Cloud Reference
    Cloud Bigtable: Petabyte-scale, low-latency, non-relational 🔗Link 🔗Link. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • A Graph-Based Firebase
    > These triples say that the Layer with id 1 has a fontSize 20 and backgroundColor blue. Since they are different rows, there’s no conflict. This sounds a lot like Bigtable (https://cloud.google.com/bigtable), which also does last-write-wins conflict resolution layer. So this is adding a GraphQL + frontend layer to it? - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • The 4 Types of NoSQL Databases You Need to Know
    Google's BigTable paper inspired this database design, and it is capable of handling large data loads on distributed machines. In addition, column-oriented databases provide efficient compression and high performance with aggregated queries such as sum, average, and minimum. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • Can someone help me understand why data batch processing and data streaming processing pose such different challenges in data management?
    Because of these and other differences, the tools used are also different. With batch processing, data might be read from large files, processed, and stored in an OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) database (like MySQL) or OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) system (like Google BigQuery). But these would not be good solutions for streaming applications, because they are not optimized for high throughput on a lot... Source: over 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing OrbitDB and Google Cloud Bigtable, you can also consider the following products

MongoDB - MongoDB (from "humongous") is a scalable, high-performance NoSQL database.

Datahike - A durable datalog database adaptable for distribution.

Amazon Aurora - MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud. Performance and availability of commercial-grade databases at 1/10th the cost.

Datomic - The fully transactional, cloud-ready, distributed database

Google Cloud Spanner - Google Cloud Spanner is a horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service.

Matisse - Matisse is a post-relational SQL database.