DBMS > Altibase vs. Informix vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP HANA vs. SAP IQ

System Properties Comparison Altibase vs. Informix vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP HANA vs. SAP IQ

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

In-memory, column based data store. Available as appliance or cloud service

Columnar RDBMS optimized for Big Data analytics

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

column-oriented

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with SAP Hana, Enterprise Edition
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	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	44.69
Rank	#22	Overall
	#16	Relational DBMS

Score	2.75
Rank	#104	Overall
	#53	Relational DBMS

Website

altibase.com

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.sap.com/products/hana.html

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sybase-iq-big-data-management.html

Technical documentation

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

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

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

help.sap.com/hana

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_IQ

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.

Microsoft

SAP

SAP, formerly Sybase

Initial release

1999

1984

1989

2010

1994

Current release

v7.3, 2023, August 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

2.0 SPS07 (April 4, 2023), April 2023

16.1 SPS04, April 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open source edition discontinued with March 2023

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

also available as a cloud based 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++

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux
Windows

Appliance or cloud-service

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
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

ANSI SQL-92

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol

JDBC
JSON API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

C
C++
Java

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

C
C#
C++
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

stored procedures and stored functions

yes

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

SQLScript, R

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

yes

shared disk or shared nothing architectures with SAP IQ Multiplexer

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes

SAP/Sybase Replication Server

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Hadoop integration

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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