DBMS > 4D vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Table Storage

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Lovefield 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

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

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

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	2.47
Rank	#110	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	2.84
Rank	#100	Overall
	#51	Relational DBMS

Score	0.33
Rank	#286	Overall
	#131	Relational DBMS

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

Score	4.04
Rank	#77	Overall
	#6	Wide column stores

Website

www.4d.com

cloud.google.com/spanner

google.github.io/lovefield

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

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

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

4D, Inc

Google

Microsoft

Initial release

1984

2017

2014

2012

Current release

v20, April 2023

2.1.12, February 2017

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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

JavaScript

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

hosted

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

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

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

JavaScript

.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

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

Using read-only observers

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

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

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

none

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 Google 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

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

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

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

using MemoryDB

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 can be defined down to the item level

Access rights based on private key authentication or shared access signatures

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