DBMS > 4D vs. FileMaker vs. Firebird vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. STSdb

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. FileMaker vs. Firebird vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. STSdb

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.

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Key-Value Store with special method for indexing

optimized for high performance using a special indexing method

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.47
Rank	#110	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	47.91
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.10
Rank	#357	Overall
	#51	Key-value stores

Website

www.4d.com

www.claris.com/filemaker

www.firebirdsql.org

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

github.com/STSSoft/STSdb4

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

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

Developer

4D, Inc

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Firebird Foundation

Microsoft

STS Soft SC

Initial release

1984

1983

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1989

2011

Current release

v20, April 2023

19.4.1, November 2021

5.0.0, January 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

4.0.8, September 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

restricted free version is available

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.

SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
Windows

Windows

Data scheme

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

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

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

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

.NET Client API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

PHP

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

C#
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

PSQL

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

Triggers

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

Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

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

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

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

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.