DBMS > Informix vs. Microsoft Access vs. OpenSearch vs. QuestDB

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. Microsoft Access vs. OpenSearch vs. QuestDB

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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.)

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Vector DBMS

Relational 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	16.03
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Score	2.70
Rank	#105	Overall
	#8	Time Series DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

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

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

questdb.io

Technical documentation

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

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

opensearch.org/docs/latest

questdb.io/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

Amazon Web Services

QuestDB Technology Inc

Initial release

1984

1992

2021

2014

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

2.5.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

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STACKIT OpenSearch offers OpenSearch in a managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant, for a wide range of applications like analytics, website search, offering scalability and fast data access.

Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

C++

Java

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

SQL-like query language

SQL with time-series extensions

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Supported programming languages

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

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

yes

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

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

ACID for single-table writes

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

through memory mapped files

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
» more

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
» more

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
» more

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
» more

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

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