DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. GBase vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Informix vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. GBase vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Informix vs. Realm

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Widely used RDBMS in China, including analytical, transactional, distributed transactional, and cloud-native data warehousing.

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

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

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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

Score	74.45
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	1.05
Rank	#186	Overall
	#86	Relational DBMS

Score	2.75
Rank	#104	Overall
	#19	Document stores

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	7.41
Rank	#52	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.gbase.cn

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

www.ibm.com/products/informix

realm.io

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

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

realm.io/docs

Developer

Amazon

General Data Technology Co., Ltd.

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

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.

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

2012

2004

2010

1984

2014

Current release

GBase 8a, GBase 8s, GBase 8c

14.10.FC5, November 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C, Java, Python

Erlang

C, C++ and Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

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

Standard with numerous extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
C API
JDBC
ODBC

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

JDBC
JSON API

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

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

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

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

yes

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning (by range, list and hash) and vertical partitioning

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

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

ACID

atomic operations within a document possible

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Optimistic locking

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

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

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

yes

Access rights for users can be defined per database

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

yes

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