DBMS > IBM Db2 vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Access vs. OpenSearch vs. TiDB

System Properties Comparison IBM Db2 vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Access vs. OpenSearch vs. TiDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

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

Microsoft Access combines a backend RDBMS (JET / ACE Engine) with a GUI frontend for data manipulation and queries.

The Access frontend is often used for accessing other datasources (DBMS, Excel, etc.)

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

TiDB is an open source distributed SQL database that supports Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP) workloads. It is MySQL compatible and features horizontal scalability, strong consistency, and high availability.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Vector DBMS

Document store

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

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	16.36
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Score	4.66
Rank	#70	Overall
	#38	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/db2

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/access

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

pingcap.com

Technical documentation

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

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

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

opensearch.org/docs/latest

docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable

Developer

IBM

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.

Microsoft

Amazon Web Services

PingCAP, Inc.

Initial release

1983

host version

1984

1992

2021

2016

Current release

12.1, October 2016

14.10.FC5, November 2020

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

2.5.0, January 2023

8.0.0, March 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free version is available

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

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.

Aiven for OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.
STACKIT OpenSearch offers OpenSearch in a managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant, for a wide range of applications like analytics, website search, offering scalability and fast data access.

TiDB Cloud: Fully-managed TiDB Service. Bring everything great about TiDB to the cloud.

Implementation language

C and C++

C, C++ and Java

C++

Java

Go, Rust

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

All OS with a Java VM

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

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

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

SQL-like query language

yes

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

JDBC
JSON API

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

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

GORM
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
SQLAlchemy

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

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

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java (JDBC-ODBC)
VBA
Visual Basic.NET

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

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

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Sharding

none

Sharding

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

yes

Using Raft consensus algorithm to ensure data replication with strong consistency among multiple replicas.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with TiSpark Connector

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

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

full support since version 6.6

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

but no files for transaction logging

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

a simple user-level security was built in till version Access 2003

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

TiDB is an advanced open-source, distributed SQL database for modern application...
» more

Competitive advantages

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

- HORIZONTAL SCALING : TiDB grants total transparency into your data workloads without...
» more

Typical application scenarios

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

TiDB is ideal for transactional applications that require extreme scalability and...
» more

Key customers

Block, Pinterest, Catalyst, Bolt, Flipkart, Capcom, Shopee (E-commerce), JD Cloud...
» more

Market metrics

34K+ GitHub stars 5K+ members in TiDB Community Slack 1K+ community contributors...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

TiDB Community : Free open source software (Apache 2.0) TiDB Self-Hosted : Enterprise...
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.