DBMS > dBASE vs. Firebird vs. Ingres vs. STSdb vs. VoltDB

System Properties Comparison dBASE vs. Firebird vs. Ingres vs. STSdb vs. VoltDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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.

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

Well established RDBMS

Key-Value Store with special method for indexing

optimized for high performance using a special indexing method

Distributed In-Memory NewSQL RDBMS

Used for OLTP applications with a high frequency of relatively simple transactions, that can hold all their data in memory

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Relational DBMS

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

Score	10.34
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	4.11
Rank	#81	Overall
	#44	Relational DBMS

Score	0.04
Rank	#360	Overall
	#52	Key-value stores

Score	1.44
Rank	#158	Overall
	#73	Relational DBMS

Website

www.dbase.com

www.firebirdsql.org

www.actian.com/databases/ingres

github.com/STSSoft/STSdb4

www.voltdb.com

Technical documentation

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

docs.actian.com/ingres

docs.voltdb.com

Developer

Asthon Tate

Firebird Foundation

Actian Corporation

STS Soft SC

VoltDB Inc.

Initial release

1979

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1974

originally developed at University Berkely in early 1970s

2011

2010

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

5.0.0, January 2024

11.2, May 2022

4.0.8, September 2015

11.3, April 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

Open Source

GPLv2, commercial license available

Open Source

AGPL for Community Edition, commercial license for Enterprise, AWS, and Pro Editions

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.

Implementation language

C and C++

Java, C++

Server operating systems

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

AIX
HP Open VMS
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Windows

Linux
OS X

for development

Data scheme

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

primitive types and user defined types (classes)

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.

but tools for importing/exporting data from/to XML-files available

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

only a subset of SQL 99

APIs and other access methods

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

.NET Client API
JDBC
ODBC
proprietary protocol (OpenAPI)

.NET Client API

Java API
JDBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

dBase proprietary IDE

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
Java

C#
C++
Erlang

not officially supported
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

PSQL

yes

Java

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning

Ingres Star to access multiple databases simultaneously

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Source-replica replication

Ingres Replicator

none

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

FOREIGN KEY constraints are not supported

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

ACID

Transactions are executed single-threaded within stored procedures

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

yes

MVCC

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Snapshots and command logging

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users and roles with access to stored procedures

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