Difference Between Cloud Firestore & Firebase Databases.

• General

There is a huge difference in the types of databases used by developers. So, in this article, we will take a look at the difference between cloud firestore & firebase real-time databases used by Flutter developers.

Difference between Cloud Firestore & Firebase Database?

The Realtime Database is just a huge JSON tree, but the Cloud Firestore is a bit more structured. All data consists of a document, which is essentially a key-value store, and a collection, which is a collection of documents. Documents often refer to subcollections that contain other documents. It can contain other documents, and so on.

This structured data is useful in two ways. First, all queries are flat. That is, you can request a document without capturing all the data below it. This means that you can store your data hierarchically in a more meaningful way without having to worry about keeping your database flat. Next, there are more powerful queries. For example, you can now query between fields without having to create a “combo box” that combines and denormalizes data from other parts of the database. In some cases, CloudFirestore just runs these queries directly. Otherwise, the index will be created and maintained automatically.

1) Designed to Scale:

Cloud Firestore is more extensible than real-time databases. Note that the query scales to the size of the result set, not the dataset. In this way, the search will be kept fast no matter how large the dataset.

2) Easier Manual Fetching of Data

Similar to a real-time database, you can set up listeners in Cloud Firestore to stream changes in real-time. However, if you don’t want that behavior and need a simple call to retrieve the data, Cloud Firestore also provides it and is built in as a major use case. They’re much better than the once calls in Realtime Database-land.

3) Multi-Region Support:

This basically means that the data is distributed across multiple data centers at the same time, which improves reliability. But you still have strong consistency, meaning you can always make a query and be assured that you’re getting the latest version of your data.

4) Different pricing model

Real-time databases are calculated primarily based on storage or network bandwidth, while CloudFirestore is primarily calculated based on the number of operations performed. Will this be better, or worse? It depends on your app.

Firebase’s real-time database is structured as a JSON tree. Cloud Firestore stores data in a document, which consists of a set of key/value pairs and a collection of documents. Realtime Database stores the data in a JSON tree, while Cloud Firestore stores the data in a document that is very similar to JSON.

More Structure Data:

In Cloud FireStore, documents can include subcollections and nested objects such as “Phone” in the figure above. These objects can contain primitive fields such as strings such as “Name” and “Email” in the figure above, or complex objects such as lists.

In a real-time database, you can only sort or filter by a single property in a single query, not by property. You can also chain filters in Cloud FireStore and combine property filtering and sorting in a single query. If you want to get the data in descending order, CloudFireStore is very useful. There is no query function available in the real-time database.

You can also chain multiple “were” methods to create more specific queries logical AND in Cloud FireStore.

• Scalability: Cloud Firestore is more extensible than real-time databases. Note that query performance is proportional to the size of the result set, not the dataset. In this way, the search will be kept fast no matter how large the dataset.
• Manual fetching of data: Like a real-time database, you can listen to the data in real-time in the Cloud FireStore, but in the Cloud FireStore you can also retrieve the data manually if you only need it once.
• Security: Real-time databases require you to validate the data individually using validation rules, but CloudFireStore does the data validation automatically.

Writing the data:

We can execute multiple operations as a single batch and complete them atomically, with any combination of the set(), update(), or delete() methods. consider the below image snippet.

Pricing:

Real-time databases only charge for bandwidth and storage space, but at a higher rate. While in the Cloud FireStore, you are primarily charged for operations performed on the database for reads, writes, and deletes, and at a lower rate for bandwidth and storage.

Conclusion:

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So, in this article, we have seen the difference between cloud firestore & firebase real-time databases. Make sure to check out our other article related to Flutter. Also, feel free to comment and provide any other suggestions regarding Flutter

Written by Abhishek Dhanani

Abhishek Dhanani, a skilled software developer with 3+ years of experience, masters Dart, JavaScript, TypeScript, and frameworks like Flutter and NodeJS. Proficient in MySQL, Firebase, and cloud platforms AWS and GCP, he delivers innovative digital solutions.