DBMS > 4D vs. Cloudflare Workers KV vs. Couchbase vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Cloudflare Workers KV vs. Couchbase vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

A global, low-latency, key-value store for applications on Cloudflare with exceptionally high read volumes and low-latency.

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Primary database model

column oriented

Secondary database models

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

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

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

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	0.32
Rank	#283	Overall
	#40	Key-value stores

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

www.cloudflare.com/developer-platform/workers-kv

www.couchbase.com

google.github.io/lovefield

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

developers.cloudflare.com/kv/api

docs.couchbase.com

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

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

Developer

4D, Inc

Cloudflare

Couchbase, Inc.

Google

Microsoft

Initial release

1984

2018

2011

2014

2019

Current release

v20, April 2023

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

2.1.12, February 2017

cloud service with continuous releases

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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++, Go and Erlang

JavaScript

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

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

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

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

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

HTTP REST
Proprietary protocol

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

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

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

C
C++
Dart
JavaScript
Kotlin
Python
Rust
Scala

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

JavaScript

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

Using read-only observers

yes

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

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Automatic Sharding

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

none

yes

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

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

Ephemeral buckets

yes

using MemoryDB

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

Azure Active Directory Authentication

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