DBMS > Datomic vs. Firebird vs. Informix vs. Memcached vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison Datomic vs. Firebird vs. Informix vs. Memcached vs. SQLite

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

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

In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Key-value store

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	1.55
Rank	#144	Overall
	#67	Relational DBMS

Score	19.46
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	16.32
Rank	#35	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	16.84
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Score	103.35
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

www.datomic.com

www.firebirdsql.org

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.memcached.org

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

docs.datomic.com

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

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

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Cognitect

Firebird Foundation

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.

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2012

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1984

2003

2000

Current release

1.0.7180, July 2024

5.0.1, August 2024

14.10.FC5, November 2020

1.6.29, June 2024

3.46.1 (13 August 2024), August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

BSD license

Open Source

Public Domain

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.

Implementation language

Java, Clojure

C and C++

C, C++ and Java

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

server-less

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

JDBC
JSON API

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

Proprietary protocol

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

Clojure
Java

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

.Net
C
C++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

PSQL

yes

Triggers

By using transaction functions

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

none

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

But extensive use of caching in the application peers

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

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

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

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

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

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