DBMS > Cassandra vs. Informix vs. IRONdb vs. TypeDB

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Informix vs. IRONdb vs. TypeDB

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

IRONdb seems to be discontinued. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines Ranking.

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

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 distributed Time Series DBMS with a focus on scalability, fault tolerance and operational simplicity

TypeDB is a strongly-typed database with a rich and logical type system and TypeQL as its query language

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

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

Time Series DBMS

Graph DBMS
Relational DBMS

Often described as a 'hyper-relational' database, since it implements the 'Entity-Relationship Paradigm' to manage complex data structures and ontologies.

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	0.65
Rank	#234	Overall
	#20	Graph DBMS
	#107	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.circonus.com/solutions/time-series-database/

typedb.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

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

docs.circonus.com/irondb/category/getting-started

typedb.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

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.

Circonus LLC.

Vaticle

Initial release

2008

1984

2017

2016

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

V0.10.20, January 2018

2.26.3, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Open Source

GPL Version 3, commercial licenses available

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.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

Java

C, C++ and Java

C and C++

Java

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Linux
OS X
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

text, numeric, histograms

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.

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes

SQL-like query language (Circonus Analytics Query Language: CAQL)

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

JDBC
JSON API

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

HTTP API

gRPC protocol
TypeDB Console (shell)
TypeDB Studio (Visualisation software- previously TypeDB Workbase)

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

.Net
C
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala

All JVM based languages
Groovy
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

yes, in Lua

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Sharding

Automatic, metric affinity per node

Sharding

by using Cassandra

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

configurable replication factor, datacenter aware

Multi-source replication

by using Cassandra

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

by using Apache Kafka and Apache Zookeeper

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Immediate consistency per node, eventual consistency across nodes

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

substituted by the relationship feature

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

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 can be defined per object

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

yes

at REST API level; other APIs in progress

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

TypeDB is a polymorphic database with a conceptual data model, a strong subtyping...
» more

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

TypeDB provides a new level of expressivity, extensibility, interoperability, and...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

Life sciences : TypeDB makes working with biological data much easier and accelerates...
» more

Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
» more

Apache f or language drivers, and AGPL and Commercial for the database server. The...
» more

News

GitHub Copilot + DataStax Astra DB: Build GenAI Apps 100x Faster
21 May 2024

Empowering On-Premises Deployments with Generative AI: Introducing Vector Search for a Self-Managed Modern Architecture
15 May 2024

Tips and Tricks for the DataStax Astra CLI
7 May 2024

How to Build a Crystal Image Search App with Vector Search
25 April 2024

Knowledge Graphs for RAG without a GraphDB
18 April 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.