DBMS > HBase vs. Informix vs. OpenSearch vs. Quasardb vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison HBase vs. Informix vs. OpenSearch vs. Quasardb vs. TimescaleDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on Apache Hadoop and on concepts of BigTable

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

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

Distributed, high-performance timeseries database

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

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

Search engine

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Vector DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	27.97
Rank	#26	Overall
	#2	Wide column stores

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	16.03
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Score	0.21
Rank	#322	Overall
	#29	Time Series DBMS

Score	4.46
Rank	#71	Overall
	#5	Time Series DBMS

Website

hbase.apache.org

www.ibm.com/products/informix

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

quasar.ai

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

hbase.apache.org/book.html

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

opensearch.org/docs/latest

doc.quasar.ai/master

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Powerset

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.

Amazon Web Services

quasardb

Timescale

Initial release

2008

1984

2021

2009

2017

Current release

2.3.4, January 2021

14.10.FC5, November 2020

2.5.0, January 2023

3.14.1, January 2024

2.15.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

Free community edition, Non-profit organizations and non-commercial usage are eligible for free licenses

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

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Implementation language

Java

C, C++ and Java

Java

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
Unix
Windows

using Cygwin

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free, schema definition possible

yes

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

options to bring your own types, AVRO

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

integer and binary

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

with tags

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

Java API
RESTful HTTP API
Thrift

JDBC
JSON API

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

HTTP API

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

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Groovy
Java
PHP
Python
Scala

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

.Net
C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Coprocessors in Java

yes

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

consistent hashing

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Source-replica replication with selectable replication factor

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Single row ACID (across millions of columns)

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using LevelDB

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Transient mode

User concepts

Access control

Access Control Lists (ACL) for RBAC, integration with Apache Ranger for RBAC & ABAC

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

Cryptographically strong user authentication and audit trail

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
» more

Competitive advantages

Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
» more

Typical application scenarios

The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
» more

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