DBMS > Informix vs. Postgres-XL vs. PostgreSQL vs. RethinkDB

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. Postgres-XL vs. PostgreSQL vs. RethinkDB

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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

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

Widely used open source RDBMS

Developed as objectoriented DBMS (Postgres), gradually enhanced with 'standards' like SQL

DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

with object oriented extensions, e.g.: user defined types/functions and inheritance. Handling of key/value pairs with hstore module.

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Apache Age
Spatial DBMS
Vector DBMS

with pgvector 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	0.53
Rank	#254	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	636.25
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	2.66
Rank	#107	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.postgres-xl.org

www.postgresql.org

rethinkdb.com

Technical documentation

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

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

www.postgresql.org/docs

rethinkdb.com/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.

PostgreSQL Global Development Group

www.postgresql.org/developer

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

Initial release

1984

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2009

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

10 R1, October 2018

16.3, May 2024

2.4.1, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Open Source

BSD

Open Source

Apache Version 2

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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Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

C++

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS

FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OpenBSD
OS X
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

yes

specific XML-type available, but no XML query functionality.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

yes

standard with numerous extensions

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
JSON API

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

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

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

community-supported driver
C#

community-supported driver
C++

community-supported driver
Clojure

community-supported driver
Dart

community-supported driver
Erlang

community-supported driver
Go

community-supported driver
Haskell

community-supported driver
Java

official driver
JavaScript (Node.js)

official driver
Lisp

community-supported driver
Lua

community-supported driver
Objective-C

community-supported driver
Perl

community-supported driver
PHP

community-supported driver
Python

official driver
Ruby

official driver
Scala

community-supported driver

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

Triggers

yes

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

partitioning by range, list and (since PostgreSQL 11) by hash

Sharding

range based

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

MVCC

ACID

Atomic single-document operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC based

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

yes

users and table-level permissions

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

Related products and services

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More resources

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