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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    IBM Informix

    Score10 out of 10
    N/AInformix is an embedded relational database offering from IBM.N/A

    MariaDB Platform

    Score9.1 out of 10
    N/AMariaDB is an open-source relational database made by the original developers of MySQL, supported by the MariaDB Foundation and a community of developers. The community states recent additional capabilities as including clustering with Galera Cluster 4, compatibility with Oracle Database, and Temporal Data Tables, allowing one to query the data as it stood at any point in the past.N/A
    Pricing
    IBM InformixMariaDB Platform
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IBM InformixMariaDB Platform
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    IBM InformixMariaDB Platform
    Considered Both Products
    IBM
    Chose IBM Informix
    IBM Informix creates effective solutions for big data extraction and data transportation functionalities across the entire Cloud services and the Automation ability is the best. The security that IBM Informix provides for all our business data and other project information and …
    Incentivized
    MariaDB
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Would buy again
    10 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    10 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    10 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    7 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    IBM InformixMariaDB Platform
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    SQLite
    Score8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    PostgreSQL
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    SQLite
    Score8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM InformixMariaDB Platform
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (7 ratings)
    10.0
    (30 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (4 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.7
    (16 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IBM InformixMariaDB Platform
    Likelihood to Recommend
    IBM
    IBM Informix creates an effective and secure channel for easy and quick data management and transfer across other major Cloud platforms and other data storage systems. The analytical ability is also the best and most effective visual functionalities and the encryption and the data archiving functionalities are great and easy on reporting.
    Incentivized
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    MariaDB
    • Applications where the users need [to] execute many short queries.
    • With new storage engines such as Aria, which allows to replace MyISAM with some improvements, and XtraDB, which evolves InnoDB.
    • To fuse the legacy features with the features available in NoSQL databases.
    • Connection management, which allows multiplying the number of concurrent accesses.
    • New clustering engines, such as Galera, which allow interesting possibilities for Cloud adoption.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    IBM
    • Industry leading OLTP performance.
    • Excellent Data Warehouse performance from the basic engine. Outstanding Data Warehouse performance from the Informix Warehouse Accelerator module.
    • Best embedability among major RDBMS systems.
    • Scalable from the smallest Raspberry PI up to the largest monolithic systems and out to dozens of distributed nodes.
    • Hybrid data capabilities to merge relational data with time seriesv, geospacial data, JSON data and other non-traditional data types with performance comparable or better than systems dedicated to those data types.
    • The latest release, v15.0, removes nearly all internal limits. Informix now supports database sizes up to 0.5 Yottabytes!
    Incentivized
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    MariaDB
    • Simpler learning curve. MariaDB is a cleaner, simpler system that is (IMO) easier to learn and easier to manage effectively than many other database systems.
    • Lower hardware requirements. After migrating to MariaDB from another database software system, we find that our hardware needs have substantially decreased.
    • MariaDB support is very responsive. It's like they actually care. On the few occasions we've run into technical issues, support has always come through with what we needed. Once it was showing me a relatively new feature the server supported that I wasn't aware of, that, once I was able to properly make use of it helped me resolve a serious production performance issue.
    • Architectural flexibility. As an example, the ready availability of synchronous (Galera) versus asynchronous replication schemes without being locked into one of the other by enormous technical complexity or punitive licensing, allows the customer to find what really works best for their needs.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    IBM
    • It is very difficult to find a missing functionality in Informix, technically is great. I will again criticize the business side and how it has been managed over the past, I hope this could be improved with HCL's help. I know they are working hard, but we need to start letting the world know and revert their concept about its existence and that it is one of the best competitors within the data treatment, in the market. We need to start telling the world about success cases and stories showing this and backing up its strong technology.
    Incentivized
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    MariaDB
    • Driver Support - Some third party applications use database drivers that cause unexplained slowness with MariaDB. This can be worked around by using the MySQL drivers, but it's not clear what causes the problem in the first place.
    • Support - While online communities are helpful in diagnosing problems, there isn't as much professional documentation/support available for MariaDB as some of the other major database options.
    • Data Visualization - It would be helpful if there were more built in options for analyzing statistics and generating reports.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    IBM
    Informix is the best RDBMS on the market. Period.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    MariaDB
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    IBM
    Server management is easy enough to be able to embed the engine in a device and let it run for years without maintenance.
    Incentivized
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    MariaDB
    MariaDB is very usable and stable to be used in production settings as an alternative to MySQL. The shortcomings of SQL are present but well understood in the community, and if the decision were to be made again, I would choose MariaDB over MySQL on future projects.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    IBM
    The Informix product support team has won awards and is appreciated by the entire Informix user community.
    Incentivized
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    MariaDB
    We have launched several inquiries to MariaDB support and they have always responded very quickly and have not been tutoring for the duration of the incident/problem.
    Likewise, they want to hold constant meetings with the client to get their opinion as well as how they can help.
    I see a very human support and concerned about the customer.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    IBM
    IBM Informix creates effective solutions for big data extraction and data transportation functionalities across the entire Cloud services and the Automation ability is the best. The security that IBM Informix provides for all our business data and other project information and contacts is effective and the reports are very clean and easy to understand.
    Read full review
    MariaDB
    MariaDB stacks up the the competition just fine. Due to is ture open source nature we do not have to worry about licencing and spending money on nothing. Moreover, MariaDB does everything that we need to get done. We can run data that is a million rows or many smaller projects on the same environment with little overhead. One of the best features that MariaDB has is the ability of backup or dump data to standard text sql statements. That was one of the reasons why we choose MariaDb because it makes backups or transferring data a snap
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    IBM
    • Although I do not own nor have visibility on my company's figures:
    • Informix generates consistent savings on DBA staffing, no need for many DBAs as other DBMS require.
    • The replication architecture allowed consistent savings in the infrastructure as well as developments and maintenance, the job is already done, no need to develop complex and costly solutions, it's just a matter of configuring it.
    • The advantages of hybrid development (i.e mixing SQL and NoSQL in the same database) is not just a marketing hype: it allowed us to solve with a brilliant solution, in one afternoon of coding, a functional problem we have been having for more than 10 years!
    • The biggest drawback is that IBM pricing may be constraining, it has too important gaps between the mid range and highrange in terms of pricing
    Incentivized
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    MariaDB
    • Low CAPEX if you have a team that use open source software day by day
    • Medium OPEX if you have a team that use open source software day by day
    • Perfect to use in academic ambient to support researchers and students
    Incentivized
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