DBMS > 4D vs. Adabas vs. AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. BaseX

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Adabas vs. AlaSQL vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. BaseX

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

OLTP - DBMS for mainframes and Linux/Unix/Windows environments

used typically together with the Natural programming platform

JavaScript DBMS library

Hosted, scalable database service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

Light-weight Native XML DBMS with support for XQuery 3.0 and interactive GUI.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Multivalue DBMS

Document store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store

Native XML DBMS

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

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	3.17
Rank	#94	Overall
	#1	Multivalue DBMS

Score	0.46
Rank	#260	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#121	Relational DBMS

Score	74.07
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	1.73
Rank	#142	Overall
	#4	Native XML DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

www.softwareag.com/en_corporate/platform/adabas-natural.html

alasql.org

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

basex.org

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

docs.basex.org

Developer

4D, Inc

Software AG

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Amazon

BaseX GmbH

Initial release

1984

1971

2014

2012

2007

Current release

v20, April 2023

10.7, August 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

BSD license

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

JavaScript

Java

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

XQuery supports types

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

close to SQL 92

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

Close to SQL99, but no user access control, stored procedures and host language bindings.

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

HTTP API

with add-on software Adabas SOA Gateway
SOAP-based API

with add-on software Adabas SOA Gateway

JavaScript API

RESTful HTTP API

Java API
RESTful HTTP API
RESTXQ
WebDAV
XML:DB
XQJ

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

Natural

JavaScript

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Actionscript
C
C#
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lisp
Perl
PHP
Python
Qt
Rebol
Ruby
Scala
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

in Natural

yes

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

via events

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

yes, with additonal products like Adabas Cluster Services, Adabas Parallel Services, Adabas Vista

none

Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

none

yes

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

none

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

only for local storage and DOM-storage

ACID

ACID across one or more tables within a single AWS account and region

multiple readers, single writer

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

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

Users and groups

only with OS-specific tools (e.g. IBM RACF, CA Top Secret)

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Users with fine-grained authorization concept on 4 levels

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.