DBMS > CouchDB vs. Informix vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. Informix vs. SAP SQL Anywhere vs. Snowflake

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

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

RDBMS database and synchronization technologies for server, desktop, remote office, and mobile environments

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

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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

Score	8.30
Rank	#47	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	3.95
Rank	#80	Overall
	#42	Relational DBMS

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

couchdb.apache.org

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sql-anywhere.html

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

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

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SQL_Anywhere

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer

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.

SAP

formerly Sybase

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2005

1984

1992

2014

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

17, July 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

free developer edition available

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

Erlang

C, C++ and Java

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

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

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

JDBC
JSON API

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

ADO.NET
HTTP API
JDBC
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

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

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

yes

yes, in C/C++, Java, .Net or Perl

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Sharding

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

Database mirroring

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

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 database

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

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