DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Db2 vs. Informix vs. XTDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Db2 vs. Informix vs. XTDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Hosted, scalable database service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

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 general purpose database with bitemporal SQL and Datalog and graph queries

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Document store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

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

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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

Score	70.06
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	13.60
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	123.05
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	16.32
Rank	#35	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	0.13
Rank	#330	Overall
	#45	Document stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.ibm.com/products/db2

www.ibm.com/products/informix

github.com/xtdb/xtdb
www.xtdb.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

firebase.google.com/docs/database

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

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

www.xtdb.com/docs

Developer

Amazon

Google

acquired by Google 2014

IBM

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.

Juxt Ltd.

Initial release

2012

1983

host version

1984

2019

Current release

12.1, October 2016

14.10.FC5, November 2020

1.19, September 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

free version is available

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

MIT License

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 and C++

C, C++ and Java

Clojure

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

All OS with a Java 8 (and higher) VM
Linux

Data scheme

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, extensible-data-notation format

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

limited SQL, making use of Apache Calcite

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

JDBC
JSON API

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

HTTP REST
JDBC

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

Clojure
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, each node contains all data

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID across one or more tables within a single AWS account and region

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, flexibel persistency by using storage technologies like Apache Kafka, RocksDB or LMDB

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

yes, based on authentication and database rules

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

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