DBMS > 4D vs. Cassandra vs. HarperDB vs. Informix vs. RethinkDB

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Cassandra vs. HarperDB vs. Informix vs. RethinkDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

Ultra-low latency distributed database with an intuitive REST API supporting NoSQL and SQL (including joins). Deployment of functions and databases simultaneously with a consolidated node-level architecture.

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

DBMS for the Web with a mechanism to push updated query results to applications in realtime.

Primary database model

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

Document store

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	0.55
Rank	#248	Overall
	#38	Document stores

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	2.74
Rank	#105	Overall
	#19	Document stores

Website

www.4d.com

cassandra.apache.org

www.harperdb.io

www.ibm.com/products/informix

rethinkdb.com

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.harperdb.io/docs

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

rethinkdb.com/docs

Developer

4D, Inc

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

HarperDB

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.

The Linux Foundation

since July 2017

Initial release

1984

2008

2017

1984

2009

Current release

v20, April 2023

4.1.3, July 2023

3.1, August 2021

14.10.FC5, November 2020

2.4.1, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

free community edition available

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Apache Version 2

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.

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

Implementation language

Java

Node.js

C, C++ and Java

C++

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

dynamic schema

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON data types

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

string, binary, float, bool, date, geometry

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

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

SQL-like data manipulation statements

yes

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

Proprietary protocol

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

JDBC
ODBC
React Hooks
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
WebSocket

JDBC
JSON API

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

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C#
C++
ColdFusion
D
Dart
Delphi
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
MatLab
Objective C
Perl
PHP
PowerShell
Prolog
Python
R
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Swift

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

community-supported driver
C#

community-supported driver
C++

community-supported driver
Clojure

community-supported driver
Dart

community-supported driver
Erlang

community-supported driver
Go

community-supported driver
Haskell

community-supported driver
Java

official driver
JavaScript (Node.js)

official driver
Lisp

community-supported driver
Lua

community-supported driver
Objective-C

community-supported driver
Perl

community-supported driver
PHP

community-supported driver
Python

official driver
Ruby

official driver
Scala

community-supported driver

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Custom Functions

since release 3.1

yes

Triggers

yes

Client-side triggers through changefeeds

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

A table resides as a whole on one (or more) nodes in a cluster

Sharding

range based

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

yes

the nodes on which a table resides can be defined

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

Atomic execution of specific operations

ACID

Atomic single-document operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

MVCC based

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, using LMDB

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

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Access rights for users and roles

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

yes

users and table-level permissions

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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