DBMS > Adabas vs. AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. BaseX vs. Microsoft Access

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. BaseX vs. Microsoft Access

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

OLTP - DBMS for mainframes and Linux/Unix/Windows environments

used typically together with the Natural programming platform

JavaScript DBMS library

Hosted, scalable database service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

Light-weight Native XML DBMS with support for XQuery 3.0 and interactive GUI.

Microsoft Access combines a backend RDBMS (JET / ACE Engine) with a GUI frontend for data manipulation and queries.

The Access frontend is often used for accessing other datasources (DBMS, Excel, etc.)

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store

Native XML DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	3.17
Rank	#94	Overall
	#1	Multivalue DBMS

Score	0.46
Rank	#260	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#121	Relational DBMS

Score	74.07
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	1.73
Rank	#142	Overall
	#4	Native XML DBMS

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Website

www.softwareag.com/en_corporate/platform/adabas-natural.html

alasql.org

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

basex.org

www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/access

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

docs.basex.org

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

Developer

Software AG

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Amazon

BaseX GmbH

Microsoft

Initial release

1971

2014

2012

2007

1992

Current release

10.7, August 2023

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

BSD license

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

JavaScript

Java

C++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

XQuery supports 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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

Close to SQL99, but no user access control, stored procedures and host language bindings.

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API

with add-on software Adabas SOA Gateway
SOAP-based API

with add-on software Adabas SOA Gateway

JavaScript API

RESTful HTTP API

Java API
RESTful HTTP API
RESTXQ
WebDAV
XML:DB
XQJ

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

Supported programming languages

Natural

JavaScript

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Actionscript
C
C#
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lisp
Perl
PHP
Python
Qt
Rebol
Ruby
Scala
Visual Basic

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java (JDBC-ODBC)
VBA
Visual Basic.NET

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

via events

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

yes, with additonal products like Adabas Cluster Services, Adabas Parallel Services, Adabas Vista

none

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

none

yes

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

only for local storage and DOM-storage

ACID

ACID across one or more tables within a single AWS account and region

multiple readers, single writer

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

but no files for transaction logging

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

only with OS-specific tools (e.g. IBM RACF, CA Top Secret)

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Users with fine-grained authorization concept on 4 levels

a simple user-level security was built in till version Access 2003

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