DBMS > 4D vs. FoundationDB vs. mSQL vs. Snowflake

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. FoundationDB vs. mSQL vs. Snowflake

Please select another system to include it in the comparison.

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.47
Rank	#110	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	1.06
Rank	#185	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#85	Relational DBMS

Score	1.27
Rank	#169	Overall
	#76	Relational DBMS

Score	130.36
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

www.snowflake.com

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

apple.github.io/foundationdb

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

Developer

4D, Inc

FoundationDB

Hughes Technologies

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Initial release

1984

2013

1994

2014

Current release

v20, April 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

4.4, October 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

free licenses can be provided

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++

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

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

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

supported in specific SQL layer only

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

yes

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

JDBC
ODBC

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

in SQL-layer only

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Linearizable consistency

none

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

yes

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.

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

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.