DBMS > Adabas vs. Couchbase vs. Firebird vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Couchbase vs. Firebird vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Realm

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 distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

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

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Primary database model

column oriented

Secondary database models

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store

If a column is of type dynamic docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types/dynamic then it's possible to add arbitrary JSON documents in this cell
Event Store

this is the general usage pattern at Microsoft. Billing, Logs, Telemetry events are stored in ADX and the state of an individual entity is defined by the arg_max(timestamps)
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

support for complex search expressions docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/parseoperator FTS, Geospatial docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/geo-point-to-geohash-function distributed search -> ADX acts as a distributed search engine
Time Series DBMS

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer/time-series-analysis

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

Score	3.17
Rank	#94	Overall
	#1	Multivalue DBMS

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Website

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

www.couchbase.com

www.firebirdsql.org

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

realm.io

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer

realm.io/docs

Developer

Software AG

Couchbase, Inc.

Firebird Foundation

Microsoft

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

1971

2011

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2019

2014

Current release

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

Open Source

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.

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C and C++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

hosted

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

bool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types

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

Secondary indexes

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

yes

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API

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

with add-on software Adabas SOA Gateway

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

Microsoft SQL Server communication protocol (MS-TDS)
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

Natural

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PowerShell
Python
R

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

PSQL

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/management/updatepolicy

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

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

Automatic Sharding

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Spark connector (open source): github.com/Azure/azure-kusto-spark

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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.

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

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

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Azure Active Directory Authentication

yes

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