DBMS > Adabas vs. Firebird vs. MariaDB vs. Realm vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Firebird vs. MariaDB vs. Realm vs. Weaviate

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.

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

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

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	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	93.21
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector 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

realm.io

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

realm.io/docs

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

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

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

1971

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

2014

2019

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

11.3.2, February 2024

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

yes

with proprietary extensions

GraphQL is used as query language

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

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

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
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

PSQL

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

Change Listeners

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

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

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual 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

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

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

In-Memory realm

yes

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

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

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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Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases....
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Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability...
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As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens Featured...
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All companies that have data.
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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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As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server,...
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Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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