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

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

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A DBMS designed for efficient storage of vector data and vector similarity searches

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

Vector 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	2.31
Rank	#113	Overall
	#3	Vector DBMS

Score	44.69
Rank	#22	Overall
	#16	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.actian.com/databases/ingres

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

milvus.io

www.sap.com/products/hana.html

Technical documentation

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

docs.actian.com/ingres

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

milvus.io/docs/overview.md

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

Microsoft

SAP

Initial release

1984

1974

originally developed at University Berkely in early 1970s

1989

2019

2010

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

11.2, May 2022

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

2.3.4, January 2024

2.0 SPS07 (April 4, 2023), April 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

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.

Zilliz Cloud – Cloud-native service for Milvus

Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

C++

C++, Go

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP Open VMS
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS

10.14 or later
Windows

with WSL 2 enabled

Appliance or cloud-service

Data scheme

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

Vector, Numeric and String

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

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)

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

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

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

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

C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

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

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

Sharding

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Ingres Replicator

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

Bounded Staleness
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Session Consistency
Tunable Consistency

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

Role based access control and fine grained access rights

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Milvus is an open-source and cloud-native vector database built for production-ready...
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Competitive advantages

Highly available, versatile, and robust with millisecond latency. Supports batch...
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Typical application scenarios

RAG: retrieval augmented generation Video media : video understanding, video deduplication....
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Key customers

Milvus is trusted by thousands of enterprises, including PayPal, eBay, IKEA, LINE,...
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Market metrics

As of January 2024, 25k+ GitHub stars 10M+ downloads and installations 3k+ enterprise...
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Licensing and pricing models

Milvus was released under the open-source Apache License 2.0 in October 2019. Fully-managed...
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