DBMS > Informix vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Stardog

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Stardog

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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

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform and graph DBMS with high availability, high performance reasoning, and virtualization

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Graph DBMS
RDF store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	77.99
Rank	#16	Overall
	#11	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.02
Rank	#123	Overall
	#11	Graph DBMS
	#6	RDF stores

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

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

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.stardog.com

Technical documentation

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

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

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

docs.stardog.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.

Microsoft

Stardog-Union

Initial release

1984

2010

1989

2010

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

V12

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

7.3.0, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

60-day fully-featured trial license; 1-year fully-featured non-commercial use license for academics/students

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++

Java

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free and OWL/RDFS-schema support

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.

yes

Import/export of XML data possible

Secondary indexes

yes

supports real-time indexing in full-text and geospatial

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

Yes, compatible with all major SQL variants through dedicated BI/SQL Server

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
JSON API

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

GraphQL query language
HTTP API
Jena RDF API
OWL
RDF4J API
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SNARL
SPARQL
Spring Data
Stardog Studio
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

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

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

.Net
Clojure
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transact SQL

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

user defined functions and aggregates, HTTP Server extensions in Java

Triggers

yes

via event handlers

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, with always 3 replicas available

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication in HA-Cluster

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency in HA-Cluster

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

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

User concepts

Access control

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

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