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

System Properties Comparison Datomic vs. Firebird vs. Informix vs. PlanetScale 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

Scalable, distributed, serverless MySQL database platform built on top of Vitess

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

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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	1.09
Rank	#178	Overall
	#82	Relational DBMS

Score	103.35
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

www.datomic.com

www.firebirdsql.org

www.ibm.com/products/informix

planetscale.com

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

planetscale.com/docs

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.

PlanetScale

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2012

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1984

2020

2000

Current release

1.0.7180, July 2024

5.0.1, August 2024

14.10.FC5, November 2020

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

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 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

Docker
Linux
macOS

server-less

Data scheme

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

with proprietary extensions

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
MySQL protocol
ODBC

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

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

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

proprietary syntax

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

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency across shards
Immediate Consistency within a shard

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID at shard level

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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