DBMS > Adabas vs. CouchDB vs. Firebird vs. Google BigQuery vs. SAP IQ

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. CouchDB vs. Firebird vs. Google BigQuery vs. SAP IQ

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

A native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

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

Large scale data warehouse service with append-only tables

Columnar RDBMS optimized for Big Data analytics

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

column-oriented

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

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

Score	2.79
Rank	#102	Overall
	#2	Multivalue DBMS

Score	8.30
Rank	#47	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	58.10
Rank	#19	Overall
	#13	Relational DBMS

Score	2.64
Rank	#108	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Website

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

couchdb.apache.org

www.firebirdsql.org

cloud.google.com/bigquery

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sybase-iq-big-data-management.html

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_IQ

Developer

Software AG

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer

Firebird Foundation

Google

SAP, formerly Sybase

Initial release

1971

2005

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2010

1994

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

16.1 SPS04, April 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Erlang

C and C++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

yes

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API

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

with add-on software Adabas SOA Gateway

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

Natural

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

View functions in JavaScript

PSQL

user defined functions

in JavaScript

yes

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

improved architecture with release 2.0

none

shared disk or shared nothing architectures with SAP IQ Multiplexer

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

SAP/Sybase Replication Server

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

atomic operations within a single document possible

ACID

Since BigQuery is designed for querying data

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

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

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.

User concepts

Access control

only with OS-specific tools (e.g. IBM RACF, CA Top Secret)

Access rights for users can be defined per database

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Access privileges (owner, writer, reader) on dataset, table or view level

Google Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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