DBMS > Adabas vs. Cassandra vs. Firebird vs. NuoDB vs. Quasardb

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Cassandra vs. Firebird vs. NuoDB vs. Quasardb

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

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

NuoDB is a webscale distributed database that supports SQL and ACID transactions

Distributed, high-performance timeseries database

Primary database model

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	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	0.94
Rank	#197	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Score	0.21
Rank	#322	Overall
	#29	Time Series DBMS

Website

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

cassandra.apache.org

www.firebirdsql.org

www.3ds.com/nuodb-distributed-sql-database

quasar.ai

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

doc.nuodb.com

doc.quasar.ai/master

Developer

Software AG

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Firebird Foundation

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

quasardb

Initial release

1971

2008

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2013

2009

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

3.14.1, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

limited edition free

commercial

Free community edition, Non-profit organizations and non-commercial usage are eligible for free licenses

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.

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

Implementation language

Java

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

integer and binary

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

with tags

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

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

yes

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

Proprietary protocol

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

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

HTTP API

Supported programming languages

Natural

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C
C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

PSQL

Java, SQL

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

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

data is dynamically stored/cached on the nodes where it is read/written

Sharding

consistent hashing

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

Source-replica replication

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

Source-replica replication with selectable replication factor

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

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

ACID

tunable commit protocol

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

yes

MVCC

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using LevelDB

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Temporary table

yes

Transient mode

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

Cryptographically strong user authentication and audit trail

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

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