DBMS > Adabas vs. BigObject vs. dBASE vs. HarperDB vs. MySQL

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. BigObject vs. dBASE vs. HarperDB vs. MySQL

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

Analytic DBMS for real-time computations and queries

dBase was one of the first databases with a development environment on PC's. Its latest version dBase V is still sold as dBase classic, which needs a DOS Emulation. The up-to-date product is dBase plus.

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

Widely used open source RDBMS

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Relational DBMS

a hierachical model (tree) can be imposed

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	3.58
Rank	#91	Overall
	#1	Multivalue DBMS

Score	0.13
Rank	#342	Overall
	#150	Relational DBMS

Score	11.18
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	0.55
Rank	#252	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	1087.72
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Website

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

Technical documentation

docs.bigobject.io

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

docs.harperdb.io/docs

dev.mysql.com/doc

Developer

Software AG

BigObject, Inc.

Asthon Tate

HarperDB

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Initial release

1971

2015

1979

2017

1995

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

3.1, August 2021

8.3.0, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free community edition available

commercial

free community edition available

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Node.js

C and C++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

Linux

distributed as a docker-image
OS X

distributed as a docker-image (boot2docker)
Windows

distributed as a docker-image (boot2docker)

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

Linux
OS X

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

dynamic schema

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data 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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

SQL-like data manipulation statements

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

fluentd
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

Natural

dBase proprietary IDE

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

Lua

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

yes

proprietary syntax

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

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

none

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

none

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

automatically between fact table and dimension tables

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for dBase internal data, but IDE does support transactions when accessing external DBMS

Atomic execution of specific operations

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Read/write lock on objects (tables, trees)

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

yes

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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