DBMS > Couchbase vs. Informix vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. mSQL

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. Informix vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. mSQL

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	16.74
Rank	#33	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	16.32
Rank	#35	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	807.76
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	1.26
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

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

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

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

Hughes Technologies

Initial release

2011

1984

1989

1994

Current release

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

4.4, October 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

free licenses can be provided

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C, C++ and Java

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

yes

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

APIs and other access methods

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

JDBC
JSON API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

yes

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

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

selectable on a per-operation basis

Immediate Consistency

none

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

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

Ephemeral buckets

yes

User concepts

Access control

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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