Realm (database)


Realm is an open source object database management system, initially for mobile operating systems but also available for platforms such as Xamarin, React Native, and others, including desktop applications, and is licensed under the Apache License.
In September 2016, the Realm Mobile Platform was announced, followed by the first stable release in January 2017. It allows two-way synchronization between the Realm Object Server and the client side databases that belong to the given logged-in user. Both a developer and a commercial edition was released, along with a business license for integrating with other database management systems such as PostgreSQL.
On April 24, 2019, Realm announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by MongoDB.

History

Realm's development began in the end of 2010 by Alexander Stigsen, along with Bjarne Christiansen, under the name TightDB. The company started in 2011 at Y Combinator.
It was promoted as NoSQL with configurable durability, and the ability to share the same groups of data across multiple processes, but also even multiple devices and clusters.
TightDB renamed its product to Realm in September 2014, and released it for public testing.
In March 2015, funding of about $20 million was disclosed.
Realm was mentioned in some trade press, including by other firms such as IBM.
Realm announced version 1.0 in June 2016, and released a platform for real-time two-way synchronization, and provided a Node.js SDK for server-side applications.
In May 2017, UWP support was announced.

Features

The most notable features of Realm are the following: