DBMS > 4D vs. Couchbase vs. DuckDB vs. Kdb vs. STSdb

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Couchbase vs. DuckDB vs. Kdb vs. STSdb

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

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

An embeddable, in-process, column-oriented SQL OLAP RDBMS

High performance Time Series DBMS

Key-Value Store with special method for indexing

optimized for high performance using a special indexing method

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Key-value store

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

Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	4.57
Rank	#74	Overall
	#40	Relational DBMS

Score	7.55
Rank	#53	Overall
	#3	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	0.04
Rank	#360	Overall
	#52	Key-value stores

Website

github.com/STSSoft/STSdb4

Technical documentation

Developer

4D, Inc

Couchbase, Inc.

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

STS Soft SC

Initial release

1984

2011

2018

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2011

Current release

v20, April 2023

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

0.10, February 2024

3.6, May 2018

4.0.8, September 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

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

Open Source

MIT License

commercial

free 32-bit version

Open Source

GPLv2, commercial license available

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.

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

server-less

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

primitive types and user defined types (classes)

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

table attribute 'grouped'

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

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

yes

SQL-like query language (q)

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

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

Arrow Database Connectivity (ADBC)
CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

.NET Client API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C
C#

3rd party driver
C++
Crystal

3rd party driver
Go

3rd party driver
Java
Lisp

3rd party driver
Python
R
Ruby

3rd party driver
Rust
Swift
Zig

3rd party driver

C
C#
C++
Go
J
Java
JavaScript
Lua
MatLab
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Scala

C#
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

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

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

with views

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Automatic Sharding

none

horizontal partitioning

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

none

Source-replica replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

similar paradigm used for internal processing

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

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

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

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

Ephemeral buckets

yes

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

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

rights management via user accounts

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
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Competitive advantages

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
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Typical application scenarios

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
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Key customers

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
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Market metrics

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
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Licensing and pricing models

upon request
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