DBMS > 4D vs. Informix vs. KairosDB vs. PostgreSQL vs. Riak KV

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Informix vs. KairosDB vs. PostgreSQL vs. Riak KV

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

Distributed Time Series DBMS based on Cassandra or H2

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

Distributed, fault tolerant key-value store

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Key-value store

with links between data sets and object tags for the creation of secondary indexes

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector extension

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	0.62
Rank	#239	Overall
	#20	Time Series DBMS

Score	645.54
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	4.10
Rank	#82	Overall
	#9	Key-value stores

Website

www.4d.com

www.ibm.com/products/informix

github.com/kairosdb/kairosdb

www.postgresql.org

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

kairosdb.github.io

www.postgresql.org/docs

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/kv/latest

Developer

4D, Inc

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

OpenSource, formerly Basho Technologies

Initial release

1984

2013

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2009

Current release

v20, April 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

1.2.2, November 2018

16.2, February 2024

3.2.0, December 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

BSD

Open Source

Apache version 2, commercial enterprise edition

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL for developers with 70+ extensions and flexible orchestration tools.

Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

Java

Erlang

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

yes

standard with numerous extensions

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Graphite protocol
HTTP REST
Telnet API

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

.Net
C
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Erlang

Triggers

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

based on Cassandra

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

selectable replication factor

based on Cassandra

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

selectable replication factor

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

based on Cassandra
Immediate Consistency

based on Cassandra

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

links between data sets can be stored

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

simple password-based access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes, using Riak Security

More information provided by the system vendor

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