DBMS > 4D vs. CouchDB vs. dBASE vs. MySQL vs. PouchDB

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. CouchDB vs. dBASE vs. MySQL vs. PouchDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

A native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

dBase was one of the first databases with a development environment on PC's. Its latest version dBase V is still sold as dBase classic, which needs a DOS Emulation. The up-to-date product is dBase plus.

Widely used open source RDBMS

JavaScript DBMS with an API inspired by CouchDB

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Document store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	10.34
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	2.28
Rank	#115	Overall
	#21	Document stores

Website

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

dev.mysql.com/doc

pouchdb.com/guides

Developer

4D, Inc

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer

Asthon Tate

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Apache Software Foundation

Initial release

1984

2005

1979

1995

2012

Current release

v20, April 2023

3.3.3, December 2023

dBASE 2019, 2019

8.4.0, April 2024

7.1.1, June 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

Open Source

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

Erlang

C and C++

JavaScript

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

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

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

via views

yes

via views

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

HTTP REST

only for PouchDB Server
JavaScript API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

dBase proprietary IDE

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

JavaScript

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

View functions in JavaScript

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

yes

proprietary syntax

View functions in JavaScript

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

none

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Sharding

with a proxy-based framework, named couchdb-lounge

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication

also with CouchDB databases
Source-replica replication

also with CouchDB databases

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

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

atomic operations within a single document possible

not for dBase internal data, but IDE does support transactions when accessing external DBMS

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by using IndexedDB, WebSQL or LevelDB as backend

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 database

Access rights for users and roles

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

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