DBMS > Apache Drill vs. Couchbase vs. GBase vs. Informix vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison Apache Drill vs. Couchbase vs. GBase vs. Informix vs. TimesTen

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Schema-free SQL Query Engine for Hadoop, NoSQL and Cloud Storage

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

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

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

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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

Score	2.02
Rank	#124	Overall
	#22	Document stores
	#59	Relational DBMS

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	1.05
Rank	#186	Overall
	#86	Relational DBMS

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	1.36
Rank	#161	Overall
	#75	Relational DBMS

Website

drill.apache.org

www.couchbase.com

www.gbase.cn

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

Technical documentation

drill.apache.org/docs

docs.couchbase.com

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

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Couchbase, Inc.

General Data Technology Co., Ltd.

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.

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

2012

2011

2004

1984

1998

Current release

1.20.3, January 2023

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

GBase 8a, GBase 8s, GBase 8c

14.10.FC5, November 2020

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C, Java, Python

C, C++ and Java

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
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

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

SQL SELECT statement is SQL:2003 compliant

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

Standard with numerous extensions

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

ADO.NET
C API
JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
JSON API

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

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

C++

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

user defined functions

yes

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Automatic Sharding

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

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

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

Depending on the underlying data source

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

In-memory capabilities

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

Depending on the underlying data source

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

User concepts

Access control

Depending on the underlying data source

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

yes

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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