DBMS > 4D vs. AlaSQL vs. Microsoft Access vs. XTDB

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. AlaSQL vs. Microsoft Access vs. XTDB

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

JavaScript DBMS library

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.)

A general purpose database with bitemporal SQL and Datalog and graph queries

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Document store

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

Score	2.47
Rank	#110	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	0.51
Rank	#256	Overall
	#40	Document stores
	#118	Relational DBMS

Score	101.16
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	0.18
Rank	#332	Overall
	#46	Document stores

Website

www.4d.com

alasql.org

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

github.com/xtdb/xtdb
www.xtdb.com

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

github.com/AlaSQL/alasql

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

www.xtdb.com/docs

Developer

4D, Inc

Andrey Gershun & Mathias R. Wulff

Microsoft

Juxt Ltd.

Initial release

1984

2014

1992

2019

Current release

v20, April 2023

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

1.19, September 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

MIT-License

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Open Source

MIT License

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

JavaScript

C++

Clojure

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

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

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

All OS with a Java 8 (and higher) VM
Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, extensible-data-notation format

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

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

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

limited SQL, making use of Apache Calcite

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

JavaScript API

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

HTTP REST
JDBC

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

JavaScript

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

Clojure
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

none

yes, each node contains all data

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

none

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

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, SQL.JS or proprietary FileStorage

yes

but no files for transaction logging

yes, flexibel persistency by using storage technologies like Apache Kafka, RocksDB or LMDB

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

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

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.

Related products and services

We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis are the winners of the March ranking
2 March 2016, Paul Andlinger

show all

MS Access drops in DB-Engines Ranking
2 May 2013, Paul Andlinger

Microsoft SQL Server regained rank 2 in the DB-Engines popularity ranking
3 December 2012, Matthias Gelbmann

New DB-Engines Ranking shows the popularity of database management systems
3 October 2012, Matthias Gelbmann, Paul Andlinger

show all

Recent citations in the news

HarperDB - How and Why We Built It From The Ground Up on NodeJS
28 February 2021, hackernoon.com

Create a Marvel Database with SQL and Javascript, the easy way
2 July 2019, Towards Data Science

Multi faceted data exploration in the browser using Leaflet and amCharts
3 May 2020, Towards Data Science

provided by Google News

Abusing Microsoft Access "Linked Table" Feature to Perform NTLM Forced Authentication Attacks - Check Point Research
9 November 2023, Check Point Research

Hackers Exploit Microsoft Access Feature to Steal Windows User’s NTLM Tokens
11 November 2023, CybersecurityNews

How to Connect MS Access to MySQL via ODBC Driver
7 September 2023, TechiExpert.com

MS access program to increase awareness and independence of those living with MS and disability
10 July 2023, Nebraska Medicine

People living with MS who are severely immunocompromised can access newly funded shingles vaccine
11 October 2023, MS Australia

provided by Google News

Share this page