DBMS > Informix vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. openGauss

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. openGauss

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

Microsoft Access combines a backend RDBMS (JET / ACE Engine) with a GUI frontend for data manipulation and queries.

The Access frontend is often used for accessing other datasources (DBMS, Excel, etc.)

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

An enterprise-class RDBMS compatible with high-performance, high-availability and high-performance originally developed by Huawei

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

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	101.16
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	76.78
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	1.06
Rank	#184	Overall
	#84	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/access

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

gitee.com/opengauss
opengauss.org

Technical documentation

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

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

docs.opengauss.org/en
gitee.com/opengauss/docs

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.

Microsoft

Huawei and openGauss community

Initial release

1984

1992

2014

2010

2019

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

V12

3.0, March 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

Open Source

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

C++

C, C++, Java

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

hosted

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

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

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

SQL-like query language

yes

ANSI SQL 2011

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
JSON API

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

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

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

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java (JDBC-ODBC)
VBA
Visual Basic.NET

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

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

C
C++
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

JavaScript

Transact SQL

yes

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

JavaScript

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

horizontal partitioning (by range, list and hash)

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, with always 3 replicas available

Source-replica replication

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

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

but no files for transaction logging

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

a simple user-level security was built in till version Access 2003

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users, groups and roles according to SQL-standard

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