DBMS > Adabas vs. dBASE vs. Firebird

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. dBASE vs. Firebird

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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

dBase was one of the first databases with a development environment on PC's. Its latest version dBase V is still sold as dBase classic, which needs a DOS Emulation. The up-to-date product is dBase plus.

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

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	3.17
Rank	#94	Overall
	#1	Multivalue DBMS

Score	10.34
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Website

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

www.dbase.com

www.firebirdsql.org

Technical documentation

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

Developer

Software AG

Asthon Tate

Firebird Foundation

Initial release

1971

1979

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

5.0.0, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

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.

Implementation language

C and C++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

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

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

Supported programming languages

Natural

dBase proprietary IDE

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

PSQL

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

none

Source-replica replication

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

not for dBase internal data, but IDE does support transactions when accessing external DBMS

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

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.

User concepts

Access control

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

Access rights for users and roles

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

DB-Engines Ranking coverage expanded to 169 database management systems
3 June 2013, Paul Andlinger

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