DBMS > 4D vs. GridDB vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NCache

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. GridDB vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NCache

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

Scalable in-memory time series database optimized for IoT and Big Data

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

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

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	1.95
Rank	#128	Overall
	#10	Time Series DBMS

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

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

Score	0.94
Rank	#195	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Website

www.4d.com

griddb.net

www.ibm.com/products/informix

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

docs.griddb.net

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

Developer

4D, Inc

Toshiba Corporation

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Microsoft

Alachisoft

Initial release

1984

2013

1984

2014

2005

Current release

v20, April 2023

5.1, August 2022

14.10.FC5, November 2020

5.3.3, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

AGPL version 3 and Apache License, version 2.0 , commercial license (standard and advanced editions) also available

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Open Source

Enterprise Edition 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

C++

C, C++ and Java

C#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

Linux

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerical, string, blob, geometry, boolean, timestamp

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

JSON types

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

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

SQL92, SQL-like TQL (Toshiba Query Language)

yes

SQL-like query language

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

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

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

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

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

Notifications

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, with selectable consistency level

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Connector for using GridDB as an input source and output destination for Hadoop MapReduce jobs

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Immediate consistency within container, eventual consistency across containers

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID at container level

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

optimistic locking and pessimistic 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.

yes

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

Access rights for users can be defined per database

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

GridDB is a highly scalable, in-memory time series database optimized for IoT and...
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NCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
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Competitive advantages

1. Optimized for IoT Equipped with Toshiba's proprietary key-container data model...
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NCache is 100% .NET/ .NET Core based which fully supports ASP.NET Core Sessions ,...
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Typical application scenarios

Factory IoT, Automative Industry, Energy, BEMS, Smart Community, Monitoring system.
» more

NCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
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Key customers

Denso International [see use case ] An Electric Power company [see use case ] Ishinomaki...
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Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
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Market metrics

GitHub trending repository
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Market Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
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Licensing and pricing models

Open Source license (AGPL v3 & Apache v2) Commercial license (subscription)
» more

NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
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