DBMS > CockroachDB vs. Datomic vs. Informix vs. Snowflake vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison CockroachDB vs. Datomic vs. Informix vs. Snowflake vs. SQLite

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

CockroachDB is a distributed database architected for modern cloud applications. It is wire compatible with PostgreSQL and backed by a Key-Value Store, which is either RocksDB or a purpose-built derivative, called Pebble.

Datomic builds on immutable values, supports point-in-time queries and uses 3rd party systems for durability

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

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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

Score	4.74
Rank	#67	Overall
	#36	Relational DBMS

Score	1.55
Rank	#144	Overall
	#67	Relational DBMS

Score	16.32
Rank	#35	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	133.72
Rank	#7	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	103.35
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

www.cockroachlabs.com

www.datomic.com

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.snowflake.com

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

www.cockroachlabs.com/docs

docs.datomic.com

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

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Cockroach Labs

Cognitect

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.

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2015

2012

1984

2014

2000

Current release

24.1.0, May 2024

1.0.7180, July 2024

14.10.FC5, November 2020

3.46.1 (13 August 2024), August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0, commercial license available

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Open Source

Public Domain

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, Clojure

C, C++ and Java

Server operating systems

Linux
macOS
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

server-less

Data scheme

dynamic schema

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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

yes, wire compatible with PostgreSQL

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
JSON API

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

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust

Clojure
Java

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transaction Functions

yes

user defined functions

Triggers

By using transaction functions

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

all tables are translated to an ordered KV store and then broken down into 64MB ranges, which are then used as replicas in RAFT

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Sharding

yes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication using RAFT

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

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

via file-system locks

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

using external storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, DynamoDB, PostgreSQL, Couchbase and others)

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

recommended only for testing and development

yes

User concepts

Access control

Role-based access control

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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