DBMS > Adabas vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. SAP IQ vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. SAP IQ vs. Sphinx

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

Search-as-a-service for web and mobile app development

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Columnar RDBMS optimized for Big Data analytics

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

Primary database model

Multivalue DBMS

Search engine

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

column-oriented

Search engine

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.79
Rank	#102	Overall
	#2	Multivalue DBMS

Score	5.52
Rank	#59	Overall
	#6	Search engines

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	2.64
Rank	#108	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	5.95
Rank	#55	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

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

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sybase-iq-big-data-management.html

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_IQ

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Software AG

Microsoft

SAP, formerly Sybase

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

1971

2015

2014

1994

2001

Current release

16.1 SPS04, April 2019

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence 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++

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

SQL-like query language

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

RESTful HTTP API

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

Natural

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

C
C#
C++
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

JavaScript

yes

Triggers

JavaScript

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

yes, with additonal products like Adabas Cluster Services, Adabas Parallel Services, Adabas Vista

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

shared disk or shared nothing architectures with SAP IQ Multiplexer

Sharding

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

SAP/Sybase Replication Server

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

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.

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)

yes

using Azure authentication

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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