DBMS > Adabas vs. Firebird vs. MariaDB vs. NuoDB vs. TiDB

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Firebird vs. MariaDB vs. NuoDB vs. TiDB

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

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.

NuoDB is a webscale distributed database that supports SQL and ACID transactions

TiDB is an open source distributed SQL database that supports Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP) workloads. It is MySQL compatible and features horizontal scalability, strong consistency, and high availability.

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Document store

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

Score	3.17
Rank	#94	Overall
	#1	Multivalue DBMS

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	0.89
Rank	#198	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Score	4.66
Rank	#70	Overall
	#38	Relational DBMS

Website

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

www.firebirdsql.org

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

www.3ds.com/nuodb-distributed-sql-database

pingcap.com

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

doc.nuodb.com

docs.pingcap.com/tidb/stable

Developer

Software AG

Firebird Foundation

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

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

PingCAP, Inc.

Initial release

1971

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2013

2016

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

11.3.2, February 2024

8.1.0, May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

commercial

limited edition free

Open Source

Apache 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.

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

TiDB Cloud: Fully-managed TiDB Service. Bring everything great about TiDB to the cloud.

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Go, Rust

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

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

yes

with proprietary extensions

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

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

GORM
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
SQLAlchemy

Supported programming languages

Natural

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
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

Java, SQL

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

data is dynamically stored/cached on the nodes where it is read/written

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

Using Raft consensus algorithm to ensure data replication with strong consistency among multiple replicas.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with TiSpark Connector

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

full support since version 6.6

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

tunable commit protocol

ACID

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

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

yes

Temporary table

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

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

Fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON...
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TiDB is an advanced open-source, distributed SQL database for modern application...
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Competitive advantages

MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
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- HORIZONTAL SCALING : TiDB grants total transparency into your data workloads without...
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Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
» more

TiDB is ideal for transactional applications that require extreme scalability and...
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Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
» more

Block, Pinterest, Catalyst, Bolt, Flipkart, Capcom, Shopee (E-commerce), JD Cloud...
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Market metrics

MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux,...
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34K+ GitHub stars 5K+ members in TiDB Community Slack 1K+ community contributors...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
» more

TiDB Community : Free open source software (Apache 2.0) TiDB Self-Hosted : Enterprise...
» more

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