DBMS > 4D vs. Couchbase vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. STSdb vs. TigerGraph

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Couchbase vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. STSdb vs. TigerGraph

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

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Key-Value Store with special method for indexing

optimized for high performance using a special indexing method

A complete, distributed, parallel graph computing platform supporting web-scale data analytics in real-time

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	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

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

Score	1.83
Rank	#139	Overall
	#13	Graph DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

www.couchbase.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

github.com/STSSoft/STSdb4

www.tigergraph.com

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

docs.couchbase.com

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

docs.tigergraph.com

Developer

4D, Inc

Couchbase, Inc.

Microsoft

STS Soft SC

Initial release

1984

2011

2019

2011

2017

Current release

v20, April 2023

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

cloud service with continuous releases

4.0.8, September 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

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

commercial

Open Source

GPLv2, commercial license available

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

C++

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

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

primitive types and user defined types (classes)

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

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

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

SQL-like query language (GSQL)

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

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

.NET Client API

GSQL (TigerGraph Query Language)
Kafka
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

C#
Java

C++
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

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

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

yes

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

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

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

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

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

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

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

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

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

Ephemeral buckets

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

Role-based access control

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