DBMS > 4D vs. Adabas vs. Altibase vs. Couchbase vs. searchxml

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Adabas vs. Altibase vs. Couchbase vs. searchxml

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

An enterprise grade, high-performance RDBMS

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

DBMS for structured and unstructured content wrapped with an application server

Primary database model

Native XML DBMS
Search engine

Secondary database models

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector 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	1.07
Rank	#186	Overall
	#87	Relational DBMS

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#7	Native XML DBMS
	#25	Search engines

Website

www.4d.com

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

altibase.com

www.couchbase.com

www.searchxml.net/category/products

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

github.com/ALTIBASE/Documents/tree/master/Manuals

docs.couchbase.com

www.searchxml.net/support/handouts

Developer

4D, Inc

Software AG

Altibase

Couchbase, Inc.

informationpartners gmbh

Initial release

1984

1971

1999

2011

2015

Current release

v20, April 2023

v7.3, 2023, August 2023

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

1.0

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open source edition discontinued with March 2023

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also 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++

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

AIX
HP-UX
Linux

Linux
OS X
Windows

Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

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

close to SQL 92

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

ANSI SQL-92

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

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

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

RESTful HTTP API
WebDAV
XQuery
XSLT

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

Natural

C
C++
Java

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C++

most other programming languages supported via APIs

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

in Natural

stored procedures and stored functions

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

yes

on the application server

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

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

Sharding

Automatic Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

yes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

sychronisation to multiple collections

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

multiple readers, single writer

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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

Ephemeral buckets

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

Domain, group and role-based access control at the document level and for application services

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