DBMS > Altibase vs. Informix vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. MonetDB vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Altibase vs. Informix vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. MonetDB vs. Snowflake

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

An enterprise grade, high-performance RDBMS

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

A containerised multi-model DBMS, interoperability and analytics data platform with wide capabilities for vertical and horizontal scalability

A relational database management system that stores data in columns

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Document store
Key-value store
Object oriented DBMS
Relational DBMS

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	1.07
Rank	#186	Overall
	#87	Relational DBMS

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	4.05
Rank	#83	Overall
	#14	Document stores
	#10	Key-value stores
	#1	Object oriented DBMS
	#45	Relational DBMS

Score	1.72
Rank	#145	Overall
	#67	Relational DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

altibase.com

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.intersystems.com/products/intersystems-iris

www.monetdb.org

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

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

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

docs.intersystems.com/irislatest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls

www.monetdb.org/Documentation

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Altibase

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.

InterSystems

MonetDB BV

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

1999

1984

2018

2004

2014

Current release

v7.3, 2023, August 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

2023.3, June 2023

Dec2023 (11.49), December 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open source edition discontinued with March 2023

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Open Source

Mozilla Public License 2.0

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

AIX
Linux
macOS
Ubuntu
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

depending on used data model

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

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

ANSI SQL-92

yes

SQL 2003 with some extensions

yes

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
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
native C library

MAPI library (MonetDB application programming interface)
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C
C++
Java

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

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

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

stored procedures and stored functions

yes

yes, in SQL, C, R

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Sharding via remote tables

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

none

Source-replica replication available in experimental status

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

InterSystems IRIS is a complete cloud-first data platform which includes a multi-model...
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