DBMS > Adabas vs. Couchbase vs. Firebird vs. ObjectBox

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Couchbase vs. Firebird vs. ObjectBox

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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

Lightweight, fast on-device database for IoT, Mobile and Embedded devices, persisting and synchronising objects and vectors

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Object oriented DBMS
Vector DBMS

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

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	2.79
Rank	#102	Overall
	#2	Multivalue DBMS

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	1.29
Rank	#166	Overall
	#5	Object oriented DBMS
	#7	Vector DBMS

Website

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

www.couchbase.com

www.firebirdsql.org

github.com/objectbox
objectbox.io

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

docs.objectbox.io

Developer

Software AG

Couchbase, Inc.

Firebird Foundation

ObjectBox Limited

Initial release

1971

2011

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2017

Current release

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

5.0.0, January 2024

4.0 (May 2024)

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

Bindings are released under Apache 2.0

Apache License 2.0

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

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

Android
Any POSIX system
Docker
iOS
Linux
macOS
QNX
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, plus "flex" map-like types

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

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

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

Proprietary native 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

C
C++
Dart (Flutter)
Go
Java
Kotlin
Python
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

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

PSQL

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

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

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

Data sync between devices allowing occasional connected databases to work completely offline

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

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

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

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

News

Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) with vector databases: Expanding AI Capabilities
18 June 2024

The on-device Vector Database for Android and Java
29 May 2024

Vector search: making sense of search queries
29 May 2024

Python on-device Vector and Object Database for Local AI
28 May 2024

Evolution of search: traditional vs vector search
23 May 2024

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