DBMS > Informix vs. MariaDB vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. Postgres-XL vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. MariaDB vs. Oracle Berkeley DB vs. Postgres-XL vs. TimesTen

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

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

Widely used in-process key-value store

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

supports sorted and unsorted key sets
Native XML DBMS

in the Oracle Berkeley DB XML version

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	2.21
Rank	#117	Overall
	#20	Key-value stores
	#3	Native XML DBMS

Score	0.49
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/berkeleydb.html

www.postgres-xl.org

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

Technical documentation

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

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

docs.oracle.com/cd/E17076_05/html/index.html

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

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.

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Oracle

originally developed by Sleepycat, which was acquired by Oracle

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

1984

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

1994

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

1998

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

11.3.2, February 2024

18.1.40, May 2020

10 R1, October 2018

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

Open Source

commercial license available

Open Source

Mozilla public license

commercial

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.

STACKIT MariaDB offers MariaDB in a fully managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

C and C++

C, Java, C++ (depending on the Berkeley DB edition)

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

AIX
Android
FreeBSD
iOS
Linux
OS X
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

Linux
macOS

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

schema-free

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.

yes

only with the Berkeley DB XML edition

yes

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

SQL interfaced based on SQLite is available

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
JSON API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

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

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

.Net

Figaro is a .Net framework assembly that extends Berkeley DB XML into an embeddable database engine for .NET
others

Third-party libraries to manipulate Berkeley DB files are available for many languages
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party binding
Perl
Python
Tcl

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

user defined functions

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

only for the SQL API

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

none

horizontal partitioning

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

MVCC

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
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Competitive advantages

MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
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Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
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Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
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Market metrics

MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
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Licensing and pricing models

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
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