DBMS > Informix vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Snowflake vs. Stardog

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Snowflake vs. Stardog

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

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	16.32
Rank	#35	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	0.22
Rank	#306	Overall
	#138	Relational DBMS

Score	24.97
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	133.72
Rank	#7	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	1.93
Rank	#121	Overall
	#10	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

google.github.io/lovefield

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.snowflake.com

www.stardog.com

Technical documentation

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

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

docs.stardog.com

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.

Google

Microsoft

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Stardog-Union

Initial release

1984

2014

2010

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

2.1.12, February 2017

7.3.0, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

JavaScript

Java

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

JSON types

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

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

SQL-like query language

yes

Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
JSON API

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

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Jena RDF API
OWL
RDF4J API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SNARL
SPARQL
Spring Data
Stardog Studio
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

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

JavaScript

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

user defined functions

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Triggers

yes

Using read-only observers

JavaScript

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

Access rights for users and roles

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