DBMS > 4D vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

Cloud Firestore is an auto-scaling document database for storing, syncing, and querying data for mobile and web apps. It offers seamless integration with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

A Wide Column Store for rapid development using massive semi-structured datasets

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value store
Wide column store

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Wide column store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	3.26
Rank	#92	Overall
	#13	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

Score	7.85
Rank	#51	Overall
	#8	Document stores

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	4.48
Rank	#75	Overall
	#6	Wide column stores

Website

www.4d.com

cloud.google.com/bigtable

firebase.google.com/products/firestore

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/tables

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

4D, Inc

Google

Microsoft

Initial release

1984

2015

2017

2014

2012

Current release

v20, April 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

Android
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
Python

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

.Net
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

yes, Firebase Rules & Cloud Functions

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

yes, with Cloud Functions

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

Multi-source replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Using Cloud Dataflow

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Atomic single-row operations

yes

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

optimistic locking

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

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management. Security Rules for 3rd party authentication using Firebase Auth.

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Access rights based on private key authentication or shared access signatures

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