DBMS > 4D vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Google Cloud Firestore vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. TimesTen

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

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.

A containerised multi-model DBMS, interoperability and analytics data platform with wide capabilities for vertical and horizontal scalability

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Document store
Key-value store
Object oriented DBMS
Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.47
Rank	#110	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	7.36
Rank	#53	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	3.54
Rank	#84	Overall
	#14	Document stores
	#10	Key-value stores
	#1	Object oriented DBMS
	#45	Relational DBMS

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	1.36
Rank	#161	Overall
	#75	Relational DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

firebase.google.com/products/firestore

www.intersystems.com/products/intersystems-iris

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

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

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

docs.intersystems.com/irislatest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

Developer

4D, Inc

Google

InterSystems

Microsoft

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

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

Initial release

1984

2017

2018

2014

1998

Current release

v20, April 2023

2023.3, June 2023

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

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

AIX
Linux
macOS
Ubuntu
Windows

hosted

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

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

depending on used data model

schema-free

yes

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

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

yes

SQL-like query language

yes

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

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

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

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

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

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

.Net
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

yes, Firebase Rules & Cloud Functions

yes

JavaScript

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

yes, with Cloud Functions

yes

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Using Cloud Dataflow

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

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

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

yes

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

InterSystems IRIS is a complete cloud-first data platform which includes a multi-model...
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