DBMS > 4D vs. FileMaker vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. FileMaker vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TimesTen

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

FileMaker is a cross-platform RDBMS that includes a GUI frontend.

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	48.20
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

www.claris.com/filemaker

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

Developer

4D, Inc

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

1984

1983

2012

1989

1998

Current release

v20, April 2023

19.4.1, November 2021

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

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

A http query request can return the data in XML format

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

yes

via plugins

yes

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

PHP

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

limited functionality with using 'rules'

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

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

simple rights management via user accounts and connection to external directory services

yes, based on authentication and database rules

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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