DBMS > Adabas vs. CouchDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP IQ vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. CouchDB vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP IQ vs. Weaviate

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.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Columnar RDBMS optimized for Big Data analytics

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

column-oriented

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	3.17
Rank	#94	Overall
	#1	Multivalue DBMS

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.75
Rank	#104	Overall
	#53	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

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

couchdb.apache.org

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

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

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_IQ

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Software AG

Apache Software Foundation

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

Microsoft

SAP, formerly Sybase

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

1971

2005

1989

1994

2019

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

16.1 SPS04, April 2019

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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.

Implementation language

Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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

via views

yes

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

yes

GraphQL is used as 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

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON 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++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

C
C#
C++
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

View functions in JavaScript

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

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

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

shared disk or shared nothing architectures with SAP IQ Multiplexer

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

SAP/Sybase Replication Server

yes

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

Eventual 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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

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 can be defined per database

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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