DBMS > Adabas vs. AlaSQL vs. Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. MaxDB

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. AlaSQL vs. Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. MaxDB

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

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

A robust and reliable RDBMS optimized to run all major SAP solutions

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Document store
Relational DBMS

Wide column store

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

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

Score	3.58
Rank	#91	Overall
	#1	Multivalue DBMS

Score	0.49
Rank	#259	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#120	Relational DBMS

Score	103.86
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	18.46
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	2.65
Rank	#111	Overall
	#55	Relational DBMS

Website

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

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.couchbase.com

maxdb.sap.com/documentation

Developer

Software AG

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Couchbase, Inc.

SAP, acquired from Software AG (Adabas-D) in 1997

Initial release

1971

2014

2008

2011

1984

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

7.9.10.12, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

commercial

Limited community edition free

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.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

JavaScript

Java

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

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

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

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.

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

yes

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

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
WebDAV

Supported programming languages

Natural

JavaScript

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C#
Java
Perl
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

yes

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

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

no "single point of failure"

Automatic Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

none

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

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

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Immediate Consistency

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

User concepts

Access control

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

Access rights for users can be defined per object

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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