DBMS > dBASE vs. Firebird vs. MySQL vs. UniData,UniVerse

System Properties Comparison dBASE vs. Firebird vs. MySQL vs. UniData,UniVerse

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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

Widely used open source RDBMS

MultiValue database and application server with SQL mapping layer and meta database capabilities

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Multivalue DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	11.18
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	21.06
Rank	#31	Overall
	#19	Relational DBMS

Score	1087.72
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	3.47
Rank	#93	Overall
	#2	Multivalue DBMS

Website

www.dbase.com

www.firebirdsql.org

www.mysql.com

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

Technical documentation

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

dev.mysql.com/doc

docs.rocketsoftware.com/bundle?cluster=true&labelkey=unidata&labelkey=prod_unidata

Developer

Asthon Tate

Firebird Foundation

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Rocket Software

Initial release

1979

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1995

1985

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

5.0.0, January 2024

8.3.0, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are 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++

Server operating systems

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

optional

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

with proprietary extensions

yes

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Java API

JPA
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Proprietary protocol
RESTful HTTP API
SOAP-based API

Supported programming languages

dBase proprietary IDE

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

.Net
Basic

U2 Basic
C
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

PSQL

yes

proprietary syntax

yes

Triggers

yes

U2 Basic

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica 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

not for MyISAM storage engine

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

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

configurable

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

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

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

Access rights for users and roles

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

Access rights according to SQL-standard and operating system based

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