DBMS > 4D vs. Adabas vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Cassandra vs. Lovefield

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Adabas vs. Amazon DynamoDB vs. Cassandra vs. Lovefield

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

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Multivalue DBMS

Document store
Key-value store

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

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

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

cassandra.apache.org

google.github.io/lovefield

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

Developer

4D, Inc

Software AG

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

Initial release

1984

1971

2012

2008

2014

Current release

v20, April 2023

4.1.3, July 2023

2.1.12, February 2017

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

Java

JavaScript

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

hosted

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

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

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

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

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

yes

with add-on product Adabas SQL Gateway

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

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

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

Natural

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

JavaScript

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

in Natural

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Using read-only observers

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

no "single point of failure"

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

yes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

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

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

using MemoryDB

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)

Access rights for users can be defined per object

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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