DBMS > Apache Impala vs. Citus vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Redis

System Properties Comparison Apache Impala vs. Citus vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Redis

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for Hadoop

Scalable hybrid operational and analytics RDBMS for big data use cases based on PostgreSQL

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

Search-as-a-service for web and mobile app development

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Search engine

Key-value store

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Secondary database models

Document store

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Vector DBMS

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

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

Score	13.77
Rank	#40	Overall
	#24	Relational DBMS

Score	2.21
Rank	#118	Overall
	#56	Relational DBMS

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	5.59
Rank	#63	Overall
	#7	Search engines

Score	157.80
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Website

impala.apache.org

www.citusdata.com

www.ibm.com/products/informix

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search

redis.com
redis.io

Technical documentation

impala.apache.org/impala-docs.html

docs.citusdata.com

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

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Cloudera

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

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

Initial release

2013

2010

1984

2015

2009

Current release

4.1.0, June 2022

8.1, December 2018

14.10.FC5, November 2020

7.2.4, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

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.

Aiven for Redis: Fully managed in-memory key-value store for all your caching and speedy lookup needs.

Implementation language

C++

C, C++ and Java

Server operating systems

Linux

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

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

specific XML type available, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

with RediSearch module

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

yes

with RediSQL module

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC

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

JDBC
JSON API

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

RESTful HTTP API

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

Supported programming languages

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

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

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions and integration of map-reduce

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

yes

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

Triggers

yes

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

query execution via MapReduce

through RedisGears

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

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, groups and roles

based on Apache Sentry and Kerberos

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

yes

using Azure authentication

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

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