As principais características do fundamentoDB incluíram o seguinte:
Ordered key–value storeIn addition to supporting standard key-based reads and writes, the ordering property enables range reads that can efficiently scan large swaths of data.TransactionsTransaction processing employs multiversion concurrency control for reads and optimistic concurrency for writes. Transactions can span multiple keys stored on multiple machines.ACID propertiesFoundationDB guarantees serializable isolation and strong durability via redundant storage on disk before transactions are considered committed.LayersLayers map new data models, APIs, and query languages to the FoundationDB core. They employ FoundationDB's ability to update multiple data elements in a single transaction, ensuring consistency. An example is their SQL layer.Commodity clustersFoundationDB is designed for deployment on distributed clusters of commodity hardware running Linux.ReplicationFoundationDB stores each piece of data on multiple machines according to a configurable replication factor. Triple replication is the recommended mode for clusters of 5 or more machines.ScalabilityFoundationDB is designed to support horizontal scaling though the addition of machines to a cluster while automatically handling data replication and partitioning.Systems supportedFoundationDB supports packages for Linux, Windows, and macOS. The Linux version supports production clusters, while the Windows and macOS versions support local operation for development purposes. Configurations on Amazon EC2 are also supported.Programming language bindingsFoundationDB supports language bindings for Python, Go, Ruby, Node.js, Java, PHP, and C, all of which are made available with the product.O design da fundaçãoDB resulta em várias limitações:
Long transactionsFoundationDB does not support transactions running over five seconds.Large transactionsTransaction size cannot exceed 10 MB of total written keys and values.Large keys and valuesKeys cannot exceed 10 kB in size. Values cannot exceed 100 kB in size.A FoundationDB, com sede em Viena, VA, foi iniciada em 2009 por Nick Lavezzo, Dave Rosenthal e Dave Scherer, aproveitando sua experiência em funções executivas e de tecnologia em sua empresa anterior, Visual Sciences.
Em março de 2015, o site da comunidade FoundationDB foi atualizado para afirmar que a empresa havia mudado de direção e não estaria mais oferecendo downloads de seu produto. A empresa foi adquirida pela Apple Inc., que foi confirmada em 25 de março de 2015.
Em 19 de abril de 2018, a Apple Open Open o software, lançando -o sob a licença Apache 2.0.