DBMS > 4D vs. Adabas vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Axibase vs. Microsoft Access

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Adabas vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Axibase vs. Microsoft Access

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

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

Scalable TimeSeries DBMS based on HBase with integrated rule engine and visualization

Microsoft Access combines a backend RDBMS (JET / ACE Engine) with a GUI frontend for data manipulation and queries.

The Access frontend is often used for accessing other datasources (DBMS, Excel, etc.)

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Multivalue DBMS

Document store
Key-value store

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	0.29
Rank	#292	Overall
	#25	Time Series DBMS

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

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

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

axibase.com/docs/atsd/finance

www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/access

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

Developer

4D, Inc

Software AG

Amazon

Axibase Corporation

Microsoft

Initial release

1984

1971

2012

2013

1992

Current release

v20, April 2023

15585

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

Community Edition (single node) is free, Enterprise Edition (distributed) is paid

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

hosted

Linux

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

short, integer, long, float, double, decimal, string

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

SQL-like query language

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

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

RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
Proprietary protocol (Network API)
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

Natural

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Go
Java
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java (JDBC-ODBC)
VBA
Visual Basic.NET

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

in Natural

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

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

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

yes

Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

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

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

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

but no files for transaction logging

In-memory capabilities

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

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)

a simple user-level security was built in till version Access 2003

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