DBMS > Informix vs. PostgreSQL vs. TiDB

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. PostgreSQL vs. TiDB

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

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 open source RDBMS

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

TiDB is an open source distributed Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP) database that supports MySQL and Spark SQL syntaxes.

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.

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Document store

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

Score	23.62
Rank	#34	Overall
	#20	Relational DBMS

Score	620.84
Rank	#4	Overall
	#4	Relational DBMS

Score	3.29
Rank	#94	Overall
	#49	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.postgresql.org

pingcap.com

Technical documentation

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

www.postgresql.org/docs

docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable

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

PingCAP, Inc.

Initial release

1984

1989

1989: Postgres, 1996: PostgreSQL

2016

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

14.4, June 2022

5.0.1, April 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

BSD

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

Aiven for PostgreSQL: Fully managed and hosted PostgreSQL® with 70+ extensions and orchestration tooling included.
ScaleGrid for PostgreSQL: Fully managed PostgreSQL hosting on AWS, Azure and DigitalOcean with high availability and SSH access on the #1 multi-cloud DBaaS.

TiDB Cloud: Fully-managed TiDB Service. Bring everything great about TiDB to the cloud.

Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

Go, Rust

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

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

Linux

Data scheme

yes

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

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

standard with numerous extensions

yes

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

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

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

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

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

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

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

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

Using Raft consensus algorithm to ensure data replication with strong consistency among multiple replicas.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with TiSpark Connector

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

currently only supported in syntax

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept. No user groups or roles.

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

TiDB is an open-source NewSQL database built by PingCAP. TiDB supports Hybrid Transactional...
» more

Competitive advantages

In the current database landscape, infrastructure engineers often have to use one...
» more

Typical application scenarios

TiDB is designed to support both OLTP and OLAP scenarios. You can use TiDB , the...
» more

Key customers

Shopee (E-commerce) BookMyShow.com (E-commerce) Yiguo.com (E-commerce) JD Cloud &...
» more

Market metrics

25K+ GitHub Stars for TiDB, and 8K+ GitHub Stars for TiKV 1.6K+ members in TiDB Community...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open Source Apache 2.0 with either commercial licensing or fully-hosted DB-as-a-service...
» more

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

3rd parties

Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres: An Enterprise Grade PostgreSQL with the flexibility of a hybrid cloud solution combined with industry leading security, availability and performance.
» more

SQLFlow: Provides a visual representation of the overall flow of data. Automated SQL data lineage analysis across Databases, ETL, Business Intelligence, Cloud and Hadoop environments by parsing SQL Script and stored procedure.
» more

Percona: Database problems? Not on your watch.
Databases run better with Percona.
» more

Datasentinel: Platform for Monitoring and Analyzing the performance problems of your PostgreSQL Clusters
» more

Aiven for PostgreSQL: The familiar open source PostgreSQL® that you know and love, with no proprietary features or add-ons that will lock you in.
» more

EDB: BigAnimal is fully-managed PostgreSQL in the cloud from the database fanatics at EDB.
» more

Navicat for PostgreSQL is an easy-to-use graphical tool for PostgreSQL database development.
» more

Instaclustr: Fully Hosted & Managed PostgreSQL
» more

CYBERTEC is your professional partner for PostgreSQL services and Data Science since 2000. With offices in Austria, Uruguay, Estonia, Poland, South Africa and Switzerland, CYBERTEC operates worldwide and is here for you 24/7!
» more

DbVisualizer is equipping database professionals with the tools they need to build, manage and maintain state-of-the-art database technologies. It has sky-high user satisfaction and is the preferred tool for database professionals around the world. Customers include Tesla, Apple, Facebook, Deutsche Bank, NASA, and 25,000 others in 145 countries.
» more

The State of PostgreSQL 2022 survey is now open!
» more

pgDash: In-Depth PostgreSQL Monitoring.
» more

We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources

DB-Engines blog posts