DBMS > dBASE vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Oracle vs. SAP IQ vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison dBASE vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Oracle vs. SAP IQ vs. Sphinx

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.

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Widely used RDBMS

Columnar RDBMS optimized for Big Data analytics

Open source search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Relational DBMS

column-oriented

Search engine

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

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

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

Score	9.70
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	1244.08
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Score	2.64
Rank	#108	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	5.95
Rank	#55	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

www.dbase.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.oracle.com/database

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sybase-iq-big-data-management.html

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

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

docs.oracle.com/en/database

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_IQ

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Asthon Tate

Microsoft

Oracle

SAP, formerly Sybase

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

1979

2019

1980

1994

2001

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

cloud service with continuous releases

23c, September 2023

16.1 SPS04, April 2019

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

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

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

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

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

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

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

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

dBase proprietary IDE

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

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

C
C#
C++
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

yes

Triggers

yes

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

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

shared disk or shared nothing architectures with SAP IQ Multiplexer

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

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

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

SAP/Sybase Replication Server

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

can be realized in PL/SQL

Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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