DBMS > 4D vs. FoundationDB vs. TimesTen vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. FoundationDB vs. TimesTen vs. Weaviate

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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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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.

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Vector DBMS

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

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

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

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

apple.github.io/foundationdb

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

4D, Inc

FoundationDB

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

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

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

1984

2013

1998

2019

Current release

v20, April 2023

6.2.28, November 2020

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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++

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

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

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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 data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

in SQL-layer only

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Eventual 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

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
» more

Competitive advantages

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
» more

Typical application scenarios

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
» more

Key customers

All companies that have data.
» more

Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
» more

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.

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis are the winners of the March ranking
2 March 2016, Paul Andlinger

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Weaviate, an ANN Database with CRUD support
2 February 2021, Etienne Dilocker, SeMI Technologies (sponsor)

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Recent citations in the news

FoundationDB team's new venture, Antithesis, raises $47M to enhance software testing
13 February 2024, SiliconANGLE News

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IBM Cloudant pulls plan to fund new foundational layer for CouchDB
15 March 2022, The Register

FoundationDB, a very interesting NoSQL database owned by Apple, is now an open-source project
19 April 2018, GeekWire

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8 February 2024, Datanami

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17 December 2023, Foley & Lardner LLP

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18 July 2023, Towards Data Science

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