DBMS > CrateDB vs. InfluxDB vs. Informix vs. Lovefield vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison CrateDB vs. InfluxDB vs. Informix vs. Lovefield vs. Snowflake

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Distributed Database based on Lucene

DBMS for storing time series, events and metrics

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

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

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

Primary database model

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

Spatial DBMS

with GEO package

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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

Score	0.73
Rank	#224	Overall
	#37	Document stores
	#5	Spatial DBMS
	#16	Search engines
	#19	Time Series DBMS
	#8	Vector DBMS

Score	25.83
Rank	#28	Overall
	#1	Time Series DBMS

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

cratedb.com

www.influxdata.com/products/influxdb-overview

www.ibm.com/products/informix

google.github.io/lovefield

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

cratedb.com/docs

docs.influxdata.com/influxdb

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

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Crate

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.

Google

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

2013

1984

2014

Current release

2.7.6, April 2024

14.10.FC5, November 2020

2.1.12, February 2017

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

MIT-License; commercial enterprise version available

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

CrateDB Cloud: a distributed SQL database that spreads data and processing across an elastic cluster of shared nothing nodes. CrateDB Cloud enables data insights at scale on Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

Implementation language

Java

C, C++ and Java

JavaScript

Server operating systems

All Operating Systems, including Kubernetes with CrateDB Kubernetes Operator support

Linux
OS X

through Homebrew

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

hosted

Data scheme

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free)

schema-free

yes

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

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Numeric data and Strings

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

yes, but no triggers and constraints, and PostgreSQL compatibility

SQL-like query language

yes

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

yes

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Prometheus Remote Read/Write
RESTful HTTP API

HTTP API
JSON over UDP

JDBC
JSON API

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

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

.NET
Erlang
Go

community maintained client
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

community maintained client
Perl

community maintained client
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

community maintained client
Scala

community maintained client

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

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

JavaScript

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions (Javascript)

yes

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Using read-only observers

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

in enterprise version only

Sharding

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Configurable replication on table/partition-level

selectable replication factor

in enterprise version only

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Read-after-write consistency on record level

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

unique row identifiers can be used for implementing an optimistic concurrency control strategy

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Depending on used storage engine

yes

using MemoryDB

User concepts

Access control

rights management via user accounts

simple rights management via user accounts

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

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

The enterprise database for time series, documents, and vectors. Distributed - Native...
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InfluxData is the creator of InfluxDB , the open source time series database. It...
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Competitive advantages

Response time in milliseconds: e ven for complex ad-hoc queries. Massive scaling...
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Time to Value InfluxDB is available in all the popular languages and frameworks,...
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Typical application scenarios

IoT: accelerate your IIoT projects with CrateDB, delivering real-time analytics...
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IoT & Sensor Monitoring Developers are witnessing the instrumentation of every available...
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Key customers

Across all continents, CrateDB is used by companies of all sizes to meet the most...
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InfluxData has more than 1,900 paying customers, including customers include MuleSoft,...
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Market metrics

The CrateDB open source project was started in 2013 Honorable Mention in 2021 Gartner®...
» more

Fastest-growing database to drive 27,500 GitHub stars Over 750,000 daily active instances
» more

Licensing and pricing models

See CrateDB pricing >
» more

Open source core with closed source clustering available either on-premise or on...
» more

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