DBMS > 4D vs. Alibaba Cloud PolarDB vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Alibaba Cloud PolarDB vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

A cloud-native relational database compatible with MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle. Designed for business critical applications.

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.47
Rank	#110	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	0.66
Rank	#235	Overall
	#108	Relational DBMS

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Website

www.4d.com

www.alibabacloud.com/product/polardb

www.ibm.com/products/informix

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/polardb/product-overview

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

4D, Inc

Alibaba

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Microsoft

Initial release

1984

2014

Current release

v20, April 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

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.

Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

JSON types

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

yes

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

Java
Python

.Net
C
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

More information provided by the system vendor

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