DBMS > Adabas vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RDF4J vs. Sphinx vs. XTDB

System Properties Comparison Adabas vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. RDF4J vs. Sphinx vs. XTDB

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

RDF4J is a Java framework for processing RDF data, supporting both memory-based and a disk-based storage.

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

A general purpose database with bitemporal SQL and Datalog and graph queries

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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Trend Chart

Score	3.17
Rank	#94	Overall
	#1	Multivalue DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.69
Rank	#230	Overall
	#9	RDF stores

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Score	0.11
Rank	#343	Overall
	#46	Document stores

Website

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

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

rdf4j.org

sphinxsearch.com

github.com/xtdb/xtdb
www.xtdb.com

Technical documentation

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

rdf4j.org/documentation

sphinxsearch.com/docs

www.xtdb.com/docs

Developer

Software AG

Microsoft

Since 2016 officially forked into an Eclipse project, former developer was Aduna Software.

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Juxt Ltd.

Initial release

1971

1989

2004

2001

2019

Current release

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

3.5.1, February 2023

1.19, September 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Eclipse Distribution License (EDL), v1.0.

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Open Source

MIT License

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Java

C++

Clojure

Server operating systems

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

All OS with a Java 8 (and higher) VM
Linux

Data scheme

yes

RDF Schemas

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, extensible-data-notation format

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

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

yes

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

limited SQL, making use of Apache Calcite

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
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Java API
RIO

RDF Input/Output
Sail API
SeRQL

Sesame RDF Query Language
Sesame REST HTTP Protocol
SPARQL

Proprietary protocol

HTTP REST
JDBC

Supported programming languages

Natural

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

Java
PHP
Python

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Clojure
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in Natural

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

yes

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

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

none

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

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

yes, each node contains all data

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

Isolation support depends on the API used

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

in-memory storage is supported as well

yes

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

yes, flexibel persistency by using storage technologies like Apache Kafka, RocksDB or LMDB

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)

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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