DBMS > Informix vs. Postgres-XL vs. Realm vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. Postgres-XL vs. Realm vs. Snowflake

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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

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
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	7.41
Rank	#52	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.postgres-xl.org

realm.io

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

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

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

realm.io/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

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.

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

1984

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2014

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

10 R1, October 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Open Source

commercial

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

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux
macOS

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

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

XML type, but no XML query functionality

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

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

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

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
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Change Listeners

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

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

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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