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

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

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.

Widely used open source RDBMS

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Relational DBMS

a hierachical model (tree) can be imposed

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Search engine

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial 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	0.13
Rank	#342	Overall
	#150	Relational DBMS

Score	11.18
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	1087.72
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	15.65
Rank	#38	Overall
	#4	Search engines

Website

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

bigobject.io

www.dbase.com

www.mysql.com

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

Technical documentation

docs.bigobject.io

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

dev.mysql.com/doc

opensearch.org/docs/latest

Developer

Software AG

BigObject, Inc.

Asthon Tate

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Amazon Web Services

Initial release

1971

2015

1979

1995

2021

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

8.3.0, January 2024

2.5.0, January 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free community edition available

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

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.

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

Aiven for OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.

Implementation language

C and C++

Java

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

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

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

All search fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

with proprietary extensions

SQL-like query language

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.

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

Natural

dBase proprietary IDE

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

Lua

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

yes

proprietary syntax

yes

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

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

none

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

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

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

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

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

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.

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
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Competitive advantages

Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
» more

Typical application scenarios

The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
» more

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