DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. GigaSpaces vs. IBM Db2 vs. Informix vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. GigaSpaces vs. IBM Db2 vs. Informix vs. TimescaleDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

High performance in-memory data grid platform, powering three products: Smart Cache, Smart ODS (Operational Data Store), Smart Augmented Transactions

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

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Document store
Object oriented DBMS

Values are user defined objects

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

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Graph DBMS
Search engine

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

Relational DBMS

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	1.03
Rank	#188	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#6	Object oriented DBMS

Score	125.90
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	4.46
Rank	#71	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.gigaspaces.com

www.ibm.com/products/db2

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

docs.gigaspaces.com/latest/landing.html

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

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

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Amazon

Gigaspaces Technologies

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.

Timescale

Initial release

2012

2000

1983

host version

1984

2017

Current release

15.5, September 2020

12.1, October 2016

14.10.FC5, November 2020

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial licenses available

commercial

free version is available

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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

Java, C++, .Net

C and C++

C, C++ and Java

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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.

XML can be used for describing objects metadata

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-99 for query and DML statements

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

GigaSpaces LRMI
Hibernate
JCache
JDBC
JPA
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

JDBC
JSON API

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

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

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C++
Java
Python
Scala

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

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

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

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes, event driven architecture

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Sharding

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication

synchronous or asynchronous
Source-replica replication

synchronous or asynchronous

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

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

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

yes

Map-Reduce pattern can be built with XAP task executors

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable: ALL, QUORUM, ANY

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

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

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

Role-based 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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