DBMS > Adabas vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

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

used typically together with the Natural programming platform

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

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

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

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Document store
Key-value store

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Search engine

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

Document store

If a column is of type dynamic docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types/dynamic then it's possible to add arbitrary JSON documents in this cell
Event Store

this is the general usage pattern at Microsoft. Billing, Logs, Telemetry events are stored in ADX and the state of an individual entity is defined by the arg_max(timestamps)
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

support for complex search expressions docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/parseoperator FTS, Geospatial docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/geo-point-to-geohash-function distributed search -> ADX acts as a distributed search engine
Time Series DBMS

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer/time-series-analysis

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

Score	2.79
Rank	#102	Overall
	#2	Multivalue DBMS

Score	74.45
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	1.06
Rank	#185	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	5.52
Rank	#59	Overall
	#6	Search engines

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Website

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

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

github.com/apple/foundationdb

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

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

apple.github.io/foundationdb

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

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer

Developer

Software AG

Amazon

FoundationDB

Microsoft

Initial release

1971

2012

2013

2015

2019

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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

C++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

yes

bool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types

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

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

supported in specific SQL layer only

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API

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

with add-on software Adabas SOA Gateway

RESTful HTTP API

Microsoft SQL Server communication protocol (MS-TDS)
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

Natural

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PowerShell
Python
R

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

in SQL-layer only

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/management/updatepolicy

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

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

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

Spark connector (open source): github.com/Azure/azure-kusto-spark

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

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)

yes

using Azure authentication

Azure Active Directory Authentication

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