DBMS > Adabas vs. Firebird vs. jBASE vs. Realm vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Firebird vs. jBASE vs. Realm 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

A robust multi-value DBMS comprising development tools and middleware

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

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

Primary database model

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	1.41
Rank	#159	Overall
	#3	Multivalue DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Website

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

www.firebirdsql.org

www.rocketsoftware.com/products/rocket-multivalue-application-development-platform/rocket-jbase

realm.io

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

docs.rocketsoftware.com/bundle?labelkey=jbase_5.9

realm.io/docs

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

Software AG

Firebird Foundation

Rocket Software (formerly Zumasys)

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

1971

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1991

2014

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

5.7

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

Open Source

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++

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
Linux
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

optional

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

Embedded SQL for jBASE in BASIC

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

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
RESTful HTTP API
SOAP-based API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Natural

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
Basic
Jabbascript
Java

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

PSQL

yes

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Change Listeners

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

Sharding

none

yes

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

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

User concepts

Access control

only with OS-specific tools (e.g. IBM RACF, CA Top Secret)

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

yes

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

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