DBMS > 4D vs. Adabas vs. Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. RDFox

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Adabas vs. Cassandra vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. RDFox

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

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

High performance knowledge graph and semantic reasoning engine

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	0.23
Rank	#308	Overall
	#25	Graph DBMS
	#14	RDF stores

Website

www.4d.com

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

cassandra.apache.org

cloud.google.com/spanner

www.oxfordsemantic.tech

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

docs.oxfordsemantic.tech

Developer

4D, Inc

Software AG

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Google

Oxford Semantic Technologies

Initial release

1984

1971

2008

2017

Current release

v20, April 2023

4.1.3, July 2023

6.0, Septermber 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

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

C++

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

BS2000
Linux
Unix
Windows
z/OS
z/VSE

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

RDF schemas

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)

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

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

Proprietary protocol

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

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP API
SPARQL 1.1

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

Natural

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

C
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

in Natural

Triggers

yes

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"

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes, with add-on product Event Replicator

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

replication via a shared file system

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode, Eventual Consistency in replicated setups

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

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

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

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

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Roles, resources, and access types

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
» more

Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
» more

Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
» more

Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

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

News

GitHub Copilot + DataStax Astra DB: Build GenAI Apps 100x Faster
21 May 2024

Empowering On-Premises Deployments with Generative AI: Introducing Vector Search for a Self-Managed Modern Architecture
15 May 2024

Tips and Tricks for the DataStax Astra CLI
7 May 2024

How to Build a Crystal Image Search App with Vector Search
25 April 2024

Knowledge Graphs for RAG without a GraphDB
18 April 2024

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.