DBMS > Adabas vs. FileMaker vs. MariaDB vs. mSQL vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. FileMaker vs. MariaDB vs. mSQL vs. Sphinx

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

FileMaker is a cross-platform RDBMS that includes a GUI frontend.

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	3.17
Rank	#94	Overall
	#1	Multivalue DBMS

Score	48.20
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	1.27
Rank	#167	Overall
	#77	Relational DBMS

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

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

www.claris.com/filemaker

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Software AG

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Hughes Technologies

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

1971

1983

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

1994

2001

Current release

19.4.1, November 2021

11.3.2, February 2024

4.4, October 2021

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

commercial

free licenses can be provided

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

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.

STACKIT MariaDB offers MariaDB in a fully managed version in enterprise grade, 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

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.

yes

A http query request can return the data in XML format

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

yes

via plugins

yes

with proprietary extensions

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API

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

with add-on software Adabas SOA Gateway

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

Natural

PHP

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

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

none

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

none

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

User concepts

Access control

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

simple rights management via user accounts and connection to external directory services

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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