DBMS > Adabas vs. Cassandra vs. Faircom DB vs. FileMaker vs. Google Cloud Firestore

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Cassandra vs. Faircom DB vs. FileMaker vs. Google Cloud Firestore

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

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Native high-speed multi-model DBMS for relational and key-value store data simultaneously accessible through SQL and NoSQL APIs.

FileMaker is a cross-platform RDBMS that includes a GUI frontend.

Cloud Firestore is an auto-scaling document database for storing, syncing, and querying data for mobile and web apps. It offers seamless integration with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products.

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Wide column store

Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

Score	2.79
Rank	#102	Overall
	#2	Multivalue DBMS

Score	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.29
Rank	#304	Overall
	#43	Key-value stores
	#136	Relational DBMS

Score	47.91
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	7.36
Rank	#53	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Website

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

cassandra.apache.org

www.faircom.com/products/faircom-db

www.claris.com/filemaker

firebase.google.com/products/firestore

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.faircom.com/docs/en/UUID-7446ae34-a1a7-c843-c894-d5322e395184.html

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

Developer

Software AG

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

FairCom Corporation

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Google

Initial release

1971

2008

1979

1983

2017

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

V12, November 2020

19.4.1, November 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Restricted, free version available

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.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

Java

ANSI C, C++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
QNX
SCO
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

easily portable to other OSs

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

schema free, schema optional, schema required, partial schema,

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, ANSI SQL Types, JSON, typed binary structures

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

A http query request can return the data in XML format

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes, ANSI SQL with proprietary extensions

yes

via plugins

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API

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

with add-on software Adabas SOA Gateway

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

ADO.NET
Direct SQL
JDBC
JPA
ODBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
RESTful MQTT/JSON API
RPC

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

Android
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

Natural

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js and browser)
PHP
Python
Visual Basic

PHP

Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

yes

.Net, JavaScript, C/C++

yes

yes, Firebase Rules & Cloud Functions

Triggers

yes

yes, with Cloud Functions

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

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

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

File partitioning, horizontal partitioning, sharding

Customizable business rules for table partitioning

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes, configurable to be parallel or serial, synchronous or asynchronous, uni-directional or bi-directional, ACID-consistent or eventually consistent (with custom conflict resolution).

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

Multi-source replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Using Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Tunable consistency per server, database, table, and transaction

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

tunable from ACID to Eventually Consistent

yes

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Yes, tunable from durable to delayed durability to in-memory

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 can be defined per object

Fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard with additional protections for files

simple rights management via user accounts and connection to external directory services

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management. Security Rules for 3rd party authentication using Firebase Auth.

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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