DBMS > Adabas vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Sphinx vs. SWC-DB

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Sphinx vs. SWC-DB

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

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.)

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

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

A high performance, scalable Wide Column DBMS

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Time Series DBMS

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Score	3.17
Rank	#94	Overall
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	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	5.98
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	#5	Search engines

Score	0.01
Rank	#376	Overall
	#13	Wide column stores

Website

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

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

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

sphinxsearch.com

github.com/kashirin-alex/swc-db
www.swcdb.org

Technical documentation

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Software AG

Microsoft

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Alex Kashirin

Initial release

1971

1992

1989

2001

2020

Current release

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

3.5.1, February 2023

0.5, April 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

GPL V3

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

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

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

SQL-like 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
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Proprietary protocol

Proprietary protocol
Thrift

Supported programming languages

Natural

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

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

C++

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

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

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Sharding

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

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

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

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

but no files for transaction logging

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)

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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