DBMS > Adabas vs. Informix vs. Snowflake vs. Sphinx vs. STSdb

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Informix vs. Snowflake vs. Sphinx vs. STSdb

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

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

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

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Key-Value Store with special method for indexing

optimized for high performance using a special indexing method

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

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

Score	3.17
Rank	#94	Overall
	#1	Multivalue DBMS

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	121.33
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	0.04
Rank	#360	Overall
	#52	Key-value stores

Website

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

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.snowflake.com

sphinxsearch.com

github.com/STSSoft/STSdb4

Technical documentation

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Software AG

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

STS Soft SC

Initial release

1971

1984

2014

2001

2011

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

3.5.1, February 2023

4.0.8, September 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

GPLv2, commercial license available

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, C++ and Java

C++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Windows

Data scheme

yes

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

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

primitive types and user defined types (classes)

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

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

yes

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

HTTP API

with add-on software Adabas SOA Gateway
SOAP-based API

with add-on software Adabas SOA Gateway

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Proprietary protocol

.NET Client API

Supported programming languages

Natural

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

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

C#
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

yes

user defined functions

Triggers

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

Sharding

yes

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

none

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

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

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

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