DBMS > Firebird vs. GBase vs. Informix vs. MySQL

System Properties Comparison Firebird vs. GBase vs. Informix vs. MySQL

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Widely used RDBMS in China, including analytical, transactional, distributed transactional, and cloud-native data warehousing.

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

Widely used open source RDBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

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	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	1.05
Rank	#186	Overall
	#86	Relational DBMS

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	1061.34
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Website

www.firebirdsql.org

www.gbase.cn

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.mysql.com

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

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

dev.mysql.com/doc

Developer

Firebird Foundation

General Data Technology Co., Ltd.

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.

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2004

1984

1995

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

GBase 8a, GBase 8s, GBase 8c

14.10.FC5, November 2020

8.4.0, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

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.

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

Implementation language

C and C++

C, Java, Python

C, C++ and Java

C and C++

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

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

yes

Standard with numerous extensions

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
C API
JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
JSON API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

user defined functions

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning (by range, list and hash) and vertical partitioning

Sharding

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

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

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

yes

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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