DBMS > Adabas vs. AlaSQL vs. Firebird vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Oracle

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. AlaSQL vs. Firebird vs. IBM Cloudant vs. Oracle

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

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

Widely used RDBMS

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

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	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	2.68
Rank	#106	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	1236.29
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Website

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

alasql.org

www.firebirdsql.org

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

www.oracle.com/database

Technical documentation

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

docs.oracle.com/en/database

Developer

Software AG

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Firebird Foundation

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

Oracle

Initial release

1971

2014

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2010

1980

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

23c, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

MIT-License

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

restricted free version is available

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 and C++

Erlang

C and C++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

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

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

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.

yes

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

with proprietary extensions

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

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

Natural

JavaScript

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

PSQL

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

Triggers

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

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

none

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

none

Eventual Consistency

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

atomic operations within a document possible

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

yes

Optimistic locking

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

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

User concepts

Access control

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Access rights for users can be defined per database

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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