DBMS > Adabas vs. AlaSQL vs. Couchbase vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. AlaSQL vs. Couchbase vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search

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

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

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

Search-as-a-service for web and mobile app development

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Search engine

Secondary database models

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

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Vector DBMS

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

Score	2.79
Rank	#102	Overall
	#2	Multivalue DBMS

Score	0.51
Rank	#256	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#118	Relational DBMS

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	125.90
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	5.52
Rank	#59	Overall
	#6	Search engines

Website

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

alasql.org

www.couchbase.com

www.ibm.com/products/db2

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.couchbase.com

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search

Developer

Software AG

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Couchbase, Inc.

IBM

Microsoft

Initial release

1971

2014

2011

1983

host version

2015

Current release

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

12.1, October 2016

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

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

commercial

free version is available

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

JavaScript

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C and C++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

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

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

hosted

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

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++, 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

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

Natural

JavaScript

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

C#
Java
JavaScript
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

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

none

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

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

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

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)

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

using Azure authentication

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