DBMS > Adabas vs. Firebird vs. Microsoft Access vs. NuoDB vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Firebird vs. Microsoft Access vs. NuoDB 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

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

Microsoft Access combines a backend RDBMS (JET / ACE Engine) with a GUI frontend for data manipulation and queries.

The Access frontend is often used for accessing other datasources (DBMS, Excel, etc.)

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

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

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Relational 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	101.16
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	0.94
Rank	#197	Overall
	#92	Relational DBMS

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

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

www.firebirdsql.org

www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/access

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

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

doc.nuodb.com

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Software AG

Firebird Foundation

Microsoft

Dassault Systèmes

originally NuoDB, Inc.

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

1971

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1992

2013

2014

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

limited edition free

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 and C++

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

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

hosted

Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, SoftLayer
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

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

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

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
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Natural

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java (JDBC-ODBC)
VBA
Visual Basic.NET

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

PSQL

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

Java, SQL

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

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

none

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

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

Source-replica replication

none

yes

Managed transparently by NuoDB

yes

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

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

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

but no files for transaction logging

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

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

a simple user-level security was built in till version Access 2003

Standard SQL roles/ privileges, Administrative Users

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

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