DBMS > Altibase vs. Firebird vs. IBM Db2 vs. jBASE vs. Microsoft SQL Server

System Properties Comparison Altibase vs. Firebird vs. IBM Db2 vs. jBASE vs. Microsoft SQL Server

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

An enterprise grade, high-performance RDBMS

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

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

A robust multi-value DBMS comprising development tools and middleware

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Multivalue DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.02
Rank	#189	Overall
	#88	Relational DBMS

Score	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	125.90
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	1.49
Rank	#156	Overall
	#3	Multivalue DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Website

altibase.com

www.firebirdsql.org

www.ibm.com/products/db2

www.rocketsoftware.com/products/rocket-multivalue-application-development-platform/rocket-jbase

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

Technical documentation

github.com/ALTIBASE/Documents/tree/master/Manuals

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

docs.rocketsoftware.com/bundle?labelkey=jbase_5.9

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

Developer

Altibase

Firebird Foundation

IBM

Rocket Software (formerly Zumasys)

Microsoft

Initial release

1999

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1983

host version

1991

1989

Current release

v7.3, 2023, August 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

12.1, October 2016

5.7

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open source edition discontinued with March 2023

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

free version is available

commercial

restricted free version is available

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.

SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

C++

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

AIX
Linux
Windows

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

optional

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

SQL

Support of SQL

ANSI SQL-92

yes

Embedded SQL for jBASE in BASIC

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
RESTful HTTP API
SOAP-based API

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

Supported programming languages

C
C++
Java

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

.Net
Basic
Jabbascript
Java

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

stored procedures and stored functions

PSQL

yes

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

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Sharding

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Source-replica replication

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

yes

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

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

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

yes

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.

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.