DBMS > Adabas vs. Firebird vs. Ingres vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. MariaDB

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Firebird vs. Ingres vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. MariaDB

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

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

Well established RDBMS

A containerised multi-model DBMS, interoperability and analytics data platform with wide capabilities for vertical and horizontal scalability

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.

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store
Object oriented DBMS
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

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	2.79
Rank	#102	Overall
	#2	Multivalue DBMS

Score	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	3.80
Rank	#82	Overall
	#44	Relational DBMS

Score	3.54
Rank	#84	Overall
	#14	Document stores
	#10	Key-value stores
	#1	Object oriented DBMS
	#45	Relational DBMS

Score	91.04
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Website

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

www.firebirdsql.org

www.actian.com/databases/ingres

www.intersystems.com/products/intersystems-iris

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

docs.actian.com/ingres

docs.intersystems.com/irislatest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

Developer

Software AG

Firebird Foundation

Actian Corporation

InterSystems

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

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Initial release

1971

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1974

originally developed at University Berkely in early 1970s

2018

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

11.2, May 2022

2023.3, June 2023

11.3.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription 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++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

AIX
HP Open VMS
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

AIX
Linux
macOS
Ubuntu
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Data scheme

yes

depending on used data model

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

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.

but tools for importing/exporting data from/to XML-files available

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API

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

with add-on software Adabas SOA Gateway

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

.NET Client API
JDBC
ODBC
proprietary protocol (OpenAPI)

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

Natural

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

PSQL

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

horizontal partitioning

Ingres Star to access multiple databases simultaneously

Sharding

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

Source-replica replication

Ingres Replicator

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

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

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

yes

MVCC

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

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)

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

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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