DBMS > Informix vs. MariaDB vs. RethinkDB vs. SwayDB vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. MariaDB vs. RethinkDB vs. SwayDB vs. VoltDB

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.

DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.

An embeddable, non-blocking, type-safe key-value store for single or multiple disks and in-memory storage

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	91.04
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	2.66
Rank	#107	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	0.04
Rank	#387	Overall
	#61	Key-value stores

Score	1.47
Rank	#157	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

rethinkdb.com

swaydb.simer.au

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

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

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

rethinkdb.com/docs

docs.voltdb.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.

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

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

Simer Plaha

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

1984

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2009

2018

2010

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

11.3.2, February 2024

2.4.1, August 2020

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

Open Source

Apache Version 2

Open Source

GNU Affero GPL V3.0

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

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++

Scala

Java, C++

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

for development

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

string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

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

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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

community-supported driver
C#

community-supported driver
C++

community-supported driver
Clojure

community-supported driver
Dart

community-supported driver
Erlang

community-supported driver
Go

community-supported driver
Haskell

community-supported driver
Java

official driver
JavaScript (Node.js)

official driver
Lisp

community-supported driver
Lua

community-supported driver
Objective-C

community-supported driver
Perl

community-supported driver
PHP

community-supported driver
Python

official driver
Ruby

official driver
Scala

community-supported driver

Java
Kotlin
Scala

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

Java

Triggers

yes

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

Sharding

range based

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Atomic single-document operations

Atomic execution of operations

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC based

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

Snapshots and command logging

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

yes

users and table-level permissions

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

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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