DBMS > Informix vs. Oracle vs. TimescaleDB vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. Oracle vs. TimescaleDB vs. TimesTen

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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

Widely used RDBMS

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

Relational DBMS

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

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	1236.29
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	4.64
Rank	#71	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.oracle.com/database

www.timescale.com

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

Technical documentation

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

docs.oracle.com/en/database

docs.timescale.com

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

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.

Oracle

Timescale

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

1984

1980

2017

1998

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

23c, September 2023

2.15.0, May 2024

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

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.

Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

C and C++

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data 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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
JSON API

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

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

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

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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