DBMS > Adabas vs. BigObject vs. dBASE vs. MySQL vs. Oracle Berkeley DB

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. BigObject vs. dBASE vs. MySQL vs. Oracle Berkeley DB

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

Widely used in-process key-value store

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Relational DBMS

a hierachical model (tree) can be imposed

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Key-value store

supports sorted and unsorted key sets
Native XML DBMS

in the Oracle Berkeley DB XML version

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	3.17
Rank	#94	Overall
	#1	Multivalue DBMS

Score	0.13
Rank	#333	Overall
	#147	Relational DBMS

Score	10.34
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	2.21
Rank	#117	Overall
	#20	Key-value stores
	#3	Native XML DBMS

Website

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

bigobject.io

www.dbase.com

www.mysql.com

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/berkeleydb.html

Technical documentation

docs.bigobject.io

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

dev.mysql.com/doc

docs.oracle.com/cd/E17076_05/html/index.html

Developer

Software AG

BigObject, Inc.

Asthon Tate

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Oracle

originally developed by Sleepycat, which was acquired by Oracle

Initial release

1971

2015

1979

1995

1994

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

8.4.0, April 2024

18.1.40, May 2020

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

commercial license available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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Implementation language

C and C++

C, Java, C++ (depending on the Berkeley DB edition)

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

AIX
Android
FreeBSD
iOS
Linux
OS X
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

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

only with the Berkeley DB XML edition

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

SQL interfaced based on SQLite is available

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

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

.Net

Figaro is a .Net framework assembly that extends Berkeley DB XML into an embeddable database engine for .NET
others

Third-party libraries to manipulate Berkeley DB files are available for many languages
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party binding
Perl
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

Lua

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

only for the SQL API

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

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica 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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

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

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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