DBMS > FoundationDB vs. Informix vs. Postgres-XL vs. Riak KV

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. Informix vs. Postgres-XL vs. Riak KV

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

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

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

Distributed, fault tolerant key-value store

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

with links between data sets and object tags for the creation of secondary indexes

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	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	0.49
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	4.10
Rank	#82	Overall
	#9	Key-value stores

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.postgres-xl.org

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

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

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/kv/latest

Developer

FoundationDB

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.

OpenSource, formerly Basho Technologies

Initial release

2013

1984

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2009

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

14.10.FC5, November 2020

10 R1, October 2018

3.2.0, December 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Open Source

Apache version 2, commercial enterprise edition

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

C++

C, C++ and Java

Erlang

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS

Linux
OS X

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
JSON API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

yes

user defined functions

Erlang

Triggers

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

selectable replication factor

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

links between data sets can be stored

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

MVCC

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

User concepts

Access control

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes, using Riak Security

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