DBMS > Apache IoTDB vs. Informix vs. Interbase vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

System Properties Comparison Apache IoTDB vs. Informix vs. Interbase vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

An IoT native database with high performance for data management and analysis, deployable on the edge and the cloud and integrated with Hadoop, Spark and Flink

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

Light-weight proven RDBMS

originally from Borland

Microsoft Access combines a backend RDBMS (JET / ACE Engine) with a GUI frontend for data manipulation and queries.

The Access frontend is often used for accessing other datasources (DBMS, Excel, etc.)

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Primary database model

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.19
Rank	#176	Overall
	#15	Time Series DBMS

Score	18.85
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	5.04
Rank	#71	Overall
	#39	Relational DBMS

Score	105.40
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	29.85
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Website

iotdb.apache.org

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/access

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

Technical documentation

iotdb.apache.org/UserGuide/Master/QuickStart/QuickStart.html

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

docs.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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.

Embarcadero

Microsoft

Initial release

2018

1984

1992

2014

Current release

1.1.0, April 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

InterBase 2020, December 2019

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

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, C++ and Java

C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM (>= 1.8)

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Android
iOS
Linux
OS X
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

hosted

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

JSON 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.

export as XML data possible

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
Native API

JDBC
JSON API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Go
Java
Python
Scala

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
Object Pascal
PHP
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java (JDBC-ODBC)
VBA
Visual Basic.NET

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Interbase procedure and trigger language

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning (by time range) + vertical partitioning (by deviceId)

Sharding

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication methods; using Raft/IoTConsensus algorithm to ensure strong/eventual data consistency among multiple replicas

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Interbase Change Views

none

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Integration with Hadoop and Spark

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Strong Consistency with Raft

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Multiversion concurreny control

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

but no files for transaction logging

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

yes

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

a simple user-level security was built in till version Access 2003

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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