DBMS > Informix vs. Ingres vs. IRONdb vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP HANA

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. Ingres vs. IRONdb vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP HANA

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

IRONdb seems to be discontinued. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines Ranking.

Description

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

Well established RDBMS

A distributed Time Series DBMS with a focus on scalability, fault tolerance and operational simplicity

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

In-memory, column based data store. Available as appliance or cloud service

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with SAP Hana, Enterprise Edition
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	4.11
Rank	#81	Overall
	#44	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	44.69
Rank	#22	Overall
	#16	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.actian.com/databases/ingres

www.circonus.com/solutions/time-series-database/

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.sap.com/products/hana.html

Technical documentation

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

docs.actian.com/ingres

docs.circonus.com/irondb/category/getting-started

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

help.sap.com/hana

Developer

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.

Actian Corporation

Circonus LLC.

Microsoft

SAP

Initial release

1984

1974

originally developed at University Berkely in early 1970s

2017

1989

2010

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

11.2, May 2022

V0.10.20, January 2018

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

2.0 SPS07 (April 4, 2023), April 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

also available as a cloud based service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP Open VMS
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Linux
Windows

Appliance or cloud-service

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

text, numeric, histograms

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.

but tools for importing/exporting data from/to XML-files available

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language (Circonus Analytics Query Language: CAQL)

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
JSON API

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

.NET Client API
JDBC
ODBC
proprietary protocol (OpenAPI)

HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
C
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

yes, in Lua

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

SQLScript, R

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

Ingres Star to access multiple databases simultaneously

Automatic, metric affinity per node

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Ingres Replicator

configurable replication factor, datacenter aware

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Immediate consistency per node, eventual consistency across nodes

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC

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

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