DBMS > Informix vs. Memcached vs. Redis vs. Riak KV vs. RRDtool

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. Memcached vs. Redis vs. Riak KV vs. RRDtool

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

In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

Distributed, fault tolerant key-value store

Industry standard data logging and graphing tool for time series data. RRD is an acronym for round-robin database.

The data is stored in a circular buffer, thus the system storage footprint remains constant over time.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Key-value store

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Key-value store

with links between data sets and object tags for the creation of secondary indexes

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

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

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	18.08
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Score	155.94
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Score	4.01
Rank	#79	Overall
	#9	Key-value stores

Score	1.90
Rank	#132	Overall
	#11	Time Series DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.memcached.org

redis.com
redis.io

oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool

Technical documentation

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

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

www.tiot.jp/riak-docs/riak/kv/latest

oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/doc

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.

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

OpenSource, formerly Basho Technologies

Tobias Oetiker

Initial release

1984

2003

2009

1999

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

1.6.27, May 2024

7.2.5, May 2024

3.2.0, December 2022

1.8.0, 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

BSD license

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

Open Source

Apache version 2, commercial enterprise edition

Open Source

GPL V2 and FLOSS

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.

Aiven for Redis: Fully managed in-memory key-value store for all your caching and speedy lookup needs.

Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

Erlang

Implementations in Java (e.g. RRD4J) and C# available

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

Linux
OS X

HP-UX
Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

Numeric data only

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.

Exporting into and restoring from XML files possible

Secondary indexes

yes

with RediSearch module

restricted

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with RediSQL module

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
JSON API

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

Proprietary protocol

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

HTTP API
Native Erlang Interface

in-process shared library
Pipes

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
C
C++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

unofficial client library
C#
C++

unofficial client library
Clojure

unofficial client library
Dart

unofficial client library
Erlang
Go

unofficial client library
Groovy

unofficial client library
Haskell

unofficial client library
Java
JavaScript

unofficial client library
Lisp

unofficial client library
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

unofficial client library
Smalltalk

unofficial client library

with librrd library
C#

with a different implementation of RRDTool
Java

with a different implementation of RRDTool
JavaScript (Node.js)

with a different implementation of RRDTool
Lua
Perl
PHP

with a wrapper library
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

Erlang

Triggers

yes

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

yes

pre-commit hooks and post-commit hooks

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

selectable replication factor

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

through RedisGears

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

Eventual Consistency

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

links between data sets can be stored

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

yes

by using the rrdcached daemon

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

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

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

yes, using Riak Security

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