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

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Firebird vs. OpenSearch 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

A distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine forked from Elasticsearch and based on Apache Lucene

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

Vector 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	16.36
Rank	#37	Overall
	#4	Search engines

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

github.com/opensearch-project
opensearch.org

realm.io

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

opensearch.org/docs/latest

realm.io/docs

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Software AG

Firebird Foundation

Amazon Web Services

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

1971

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

2021

2014

2019

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

2.5.0, January 2023

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

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.

Aiven for OpenSearch: Fully managed open source search and analytics suite. Out-of-the-box integrations get you up and running in a couple of clicks.

Implementation language

C and C++

Java

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

All OS with a Java VM

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All search fields are automatically indexed

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

SQL-like query language

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

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON 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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Elasticsearch client

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

PSQL

yes

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

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

Sharding

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

Source-replica replication

yes

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

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

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

In-memory capabilities

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

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

yes

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

OpenSearch is a highly scalable and extensible open-source software suite for search,...
» more

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
» more

Competitive advantages

Distributed as fully open source under Apache License, Version 2.0 (ALv2), OpenSearch...
» more

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
» more

Typical application scenarios

The OpenSearch platform is used across a broad range of search , analytics, and observability...
» more

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
» more

Key customers

All companies that have data.
» more

Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

The OpenSearch Project offers open source software licensed under Apache License...
» more

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
» more

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.