DBMS > 4D vs. GigaSpaces vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft SQL Server

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. GigaSpaces vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft Azure AI Search vs. Microsoft SQL Server

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

High performance in-memory data grid platform, powering three products: Smart Cache, Smart ODS (Operational Data Store), Smart Augmented Transactions

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

Search-as-a-service for web and mobile app development

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store
Object oriented DBMS

Values are user defined objects

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Search engine

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Graph DBMS
Search engine

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Vector DBMS

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	0.97
Rank	#192	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#6	Object oriented DBMS

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	5.59
Rank	#63	Overall
	#7	Search engines

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

www.gigaspaces.com

www.ibm.com/products/db2

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/search

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

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

docs.gigaspaces.com/latest/landing.html

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search

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

Developer

4D, Inc

Gigaspaces Technologies

IBM

Microsoft

Initial release

1984

2000

1983

host version

2015

1989

Current release

v20, April 2023

15.5, September 2020

12.1, October 2016

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial licenses available

commercial

free version is available

commercial

restricted free version is available

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

Java, C++, .Net

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

hosted

Linux
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

XML can be used for describing objects metadata

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

SQL-99 for query and DML statements

yes

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

GigaSpaces LRMI
Hibernate
JCache
JDBC
JPA
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

RESTful HTTP API

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

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

.Net
C++
Java
Python
Scala

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

C#
Java
JavaScript
Python

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

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

Triggers

yes

yes, event driven architecture

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

synchronous or asynchronous
Source-replica replication

synchronous or asynchronous

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Map-Reduce pattern can be built with XAP task executors

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable: ALL, QUORUM, ANY

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

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

Role-based access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

using Azure authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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