DBMS > BigObject vs. dBASE vs. HarperDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison BigObject vs. dBASE vs. HarperDB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SQLite

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Analytic DBMS for real-time computations and queries

dBase was one of the first databases with a development environment on PC's. Its latest version dBase V is still sold as dBase classic, which needs a DOS Emulation. The up-to-date product is dBase plus.

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

a hierachical model (tree) can be imposed

column oriented

Secondary database models

Document store

If a column is of type dynamic docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types/dynamic then it's possible to add arbitrary JSON documents in this cell
Event Store

this is the general usage pattern at Microsoft. Billing, Logs, Telemetry events are stored in ADX and the state of an individual entity is defined by the arg_max(timestamps)
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

support for complex search expressions docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/parseoperator FTS, Geospatial docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/geo-point-to-geohash-function distributed search -> ADX acts as a distributed search engine
Time Series DBMS

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer/time-series-analysis

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

Score	0.13
Rank	#333	Overall
	#147	Relational DBMS

Score	10.34
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	0.55
Rank	#248	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

bigobject.io

www.dbase.com

www.harperdb.io

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

docs.bigobject.io

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

docs.harperdb.io/docs

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

BigObject, Inc.

Asthon Tate

HarperDB

Microsoft

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2015

1979

2017

2019

2000

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

3.1, August 2021

cloud service with continuous releases

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free community edition available

commercial

free community edition available

commercial

Open Source

Public Domain

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

Node.js

Server operating systems

Linux

distributed as a docker-image
OS X

distributed as a docker-image (boot2docker)
Windows

distributed as a docker-image (boot2docker)

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

Linux
OS X

hosted

server-less

Data scheme

yes

dynamic schema

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

yes

bool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

SQL-like data manipulation statements

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

fluentd
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

Microsoft SQL Server communication protocol (MS-TDS)
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

dBase proprietary IDE

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PowerShell
Python
R

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Lua

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Triggers

yes

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/management/updatepolicy

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Spark connector (open source): github.com/Azure/azure-kusto-spark

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

automatically between fact table and dimension tables

yes

Transaction concepts

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

not for dBase internal data, but IDE does support transactions when accessing external DBMS

Atomic execution of specific operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Read/write lock on objects (tables, trees)

yes

via file-system locks

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

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

Access rights for users and roles

Azure Active Directory Authentication

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