DBMS > Informix vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Realm vs. Spark SQL

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Realm vs. Spark SQL

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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

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Spark SQL is a component on top of 'Spark Core' for structured data processing

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

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

Score	7.41
Rank	#52	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	18.04
Rank	#33	Overall
	#20	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

realm.io

spark.apache.org/sql

Technical documentation

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

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

realm.io/docs

spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html

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

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

1984

2014

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

3.5.0 ( 2.13), September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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

Scala

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-like query language

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
JSON API

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

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

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

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

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

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Java
Python
R
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

yes, utilizing Spark Core

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

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

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

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

yes

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