DBMS > Informix vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. MySQL vs. NSDb vs. QuestDB

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. MySQL vs. NSDb vs. QuestDB

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Widely used open source RDBMS

Scalable, High-performance Time Series DBMS designed for Real-time Analytics on top of Kubernetes

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

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial 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	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	1061.34
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	0.08
Rank	#369	Overall
	#40	Time Series DBMS

Score	2.70
Rank	#105	Overall
	#8	Time Series DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

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

www.mysql.com

nsdb.io

questdb.io

Technical documentation

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

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

dev.mysql.com/doc

nsdb.io/Architecture

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

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

QuestDB Technology Inc

Initial release

1984

1989

1995

2017

2014

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

8.4.0, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

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

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Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

C++

C and C++

Java, Scala

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

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

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

yes: int, bigint, decimal, string

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 fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

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
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

gRPC
HTTP REST
WebSocket

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

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Java
Scala

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

over HTTP

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

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

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

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

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Sharding

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID for single-table writes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Using Apache Lucene

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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

Competitive advantages

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

Typical application scenarios

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

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

News

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12 April 2024

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.