DBMS > CockroachDB vs. Firebird vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP Adaptive Server

System Properties Comparison CockroachDB vs. Firebird vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. SAP Adaptive Server

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

CockroachDB is a distributed database architected for modern cloud applications. It is wire compatible with PostgreSQL and backed by a Key-Value Store, which is either RocksDB or a purpose-built derivative, called Pebble.

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

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

The SAP (Sybase) Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) is an enterprise-class RDBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

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

Spatial DBMS

with Boeing's Spatial Query Server

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

Score	6.15
Rank	#55	Overall
	#33	Relational DBMS

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	36.31
Rank	#25	Overall
	#17	Relational DBMS

Website

www.cockroachlabs.com

www.firebirdsql.org

www.ibm.com/products/db2

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

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sybase-ase.html

Technical documentation

www.cockroachlabs.com/docs

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

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

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_ASE

Developer

Cockroach Labs

Firebird Foundation

IBM

Microsoft

SAP, Sybase

Initial release

2015

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1983

host version

1989

1987

Current release

23.1.1, May 2023

5.0.0, January 2024

12.1, October 2016

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

16.0

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0, commercial license available

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

free version is available

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C and C++

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

Linux
macOS
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Linux
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Data scheme

dynamic schema

yes

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes, wire compatible with PostgreSQL

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

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

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust

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

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

C
C++
Cobol
Java
Java
Perl
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PSQL

yes

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

Java and Transact-SQL

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

all tables are translated to an ordered KV store and then broken down into 64MB ranges, which are then used as replicas in RAFT

none

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

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

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication using RAFT

Source-replica replication

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

Role-based access control

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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