DBMS > 4D vs. Apache IoTDB vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Apache IoTDB vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. Microsoft SQL Server

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

An IoT native database with high performance for data management and analysis, deployable on the edge and the cloud and integrated with Hadoop, Spark and Flink

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.)

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Primary database model

column oriented

Secondary database models

Document store

If a column is of type dynamic docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types/dynamic then it's possible to add arbitrary JSON documents in this cell
Event Store

this is the general usage pattern at Microsoft. Billing, Logs, Telemetry events are stored in ADX and the state of an individual entity is defined by the arg_max(timestamps)
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

support for complex search expressions docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/parseoperator FTS, Geospatial docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/geo-point-to-geohash-function distributed search -> ADX acts as a distributed search engine
Time Series DBMS

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer/time-series-analysis

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	1.18
Rank	#173	Overall
	#15	Time Series DBMS

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

iotdb.apache.org

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

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

iotdb.apache.org/UserGuide/Master/QuickStart/QuickStart.html

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

Developer

4D, Inc

Apache Software Foundation

Microsoft

Initial release

1984

2018

1992

2019

1989

Current release

v20, April 2023

1.1.0, April 2023

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

cloud service with continuous releases

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

restricted free version is available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM (>= 1.8)

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

hosted

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

bool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types

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

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

SQL-like query language

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

JDBC
Native API

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

Microsoft SQL Server communication protocol (MS-TDS)
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

C
C#
C++
Go
Java
Python
Scala

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

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PowerShell
Python
R

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/management/updatepolicy

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning (by time range) + vertical partitioning (by deviceId)

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

selectable replication methods; using Raft/IoTConsensus algorithm to ensure strong/eventual data consistency among multiple replicas

none

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Integration with Hadoop and Spark

Spark connector (open source): github.com/Azure/azure-kusto-spark

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Strong Consistency with Raft

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

but no files for transaction logging

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

yes

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

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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