DBMS > 4D vs. Informix vs. MySQL vs. Realm vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Informix vs. MySQL vs. Realm vs. TimesTen

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

Widely used open source RDBMS

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.mysql.com

realm.io

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

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

dev.mysql.com/doc

realm.io/docs

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

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.

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

1984

1995

2014

1998

Current release

v20, April 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

8.4.0, April 2024

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

C and C++

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

yes

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

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

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

proprietary syntax

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

In-Memory realm

yes

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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