DBMS > Adabas vs. Couchbase vs. Lovefield vs. Realm vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Couchbase vs. Lovefield vs. Realm vs. Snowflake

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

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

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

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

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

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	0.33
Rank	#286	Overall
	#131	Relational DBMS

Score	7.41
Rank	#52	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

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

www.couchbase.com

google.github.io/lovefield

realm.io

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

realm.io/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Software AG

Couchbase, Inc.

Google

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

1971

2011

2014

Current release

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

2.1.12, February 2017

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

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

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

commercial

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

JavaScript

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

Linux
OS X
Windows

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

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.

yes

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

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

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

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Natural

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

JavaScript

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

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

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

Using read-only observers

yes

Change Listeners

similar concept for controling cloud resources

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

yes

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

none

yes

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

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

using MemoryDB

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.

yes

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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