DBMS > Informix vs. Lovefield vs. OpenEdge vs. Realm vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. Lovefield vs. OpenEdge vs. Realm vs. SQLite

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

Application development environment with integrated database management system

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	3.51
Rank	#86	Overall
	#46	Relational DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

google.github.io/lovefield

www.progress.com/openedge

realm.io

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

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

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

documentation.progress.com/output/ua/OpenEdge_latest

realm.io/docs

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

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

Progress Software Corporation

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

1984

2014

1984

2014

2000

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

2.1.12, February 2017

OpenEdge 12.2, March 2020

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Public Domain

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.

Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

JavaScript

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

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

server-less

Data scheme

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

yes

close to SQL 92

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
JSON API

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

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

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

JavaScript

Progress proprietary ABL (Advanced Business Language)

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

Using read-only observers

yes

Change Listeners

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

horizontal partitioning

since Version 11.4

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

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

via file-system locks

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

In-Memory realm

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

Users and groups

yes

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