DBMS > Altibase vs. FoundationDB vs. Informix vs. Oracle vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Altibase vs. FoundationDB vs. Informix vs. Oracle vs. TimescaleDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

An enterprise grade, high-performance RDBMS

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

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 RDBMS

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

Relational DBMS

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

Score	1.00
Rank	#194	Overall
	#91	Relational DBMS

Score	1.07
Rank	#188	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#86	Relational DBMS

Score	18.85
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	1234.27
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	4.87
Rank	#74	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

altibase.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.oracle.com/database

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

github.com/ALTIBASE/Documents/tree/master/Manuals

apple.github.io/foundationdb

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

docs.oracle.com/en/database

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Altibase

FoundationDB

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

Timescale

Initial release

1999

2013

1984

1980

2017

Current release

v7.3, 2023, August 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

14.10.FC5, November 2020

23c, September 2023

2.13.0, November 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open source edition discontinued with March 2023

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

Implementation language

C++

C, C++ and Java

C and C++

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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

ANSI SQL-92

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol

JDBC
JSON API

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

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

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

Supported programming languages

C
C++
Java

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

stored procedures and stored functions

in SQL-layer only

yes

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

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

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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