DBMS > 4D vs. H2 vs. Microsoft Access vs. ObjectBox vs. XTDB

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. H2 vs. Microsoft Access vs. ObjectBox vs. XTDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

Full-featured RDBMS with a small footprint, either embedded into a Java application or used as a database server.

Microsoft Access combines a backend RDBMS (JET / ACE Engine) with a GUI frontend for data manipulation and queries.

The Access frontend is often used for accessing other datasources (DBMS, Excel, etc.)

Lightweight, fast on-device database for IoT, Mobile and Embedded devices, persisting and synchronising objects and vectors

A general purpose database with bitemporal SQL and Datalog and graph queries

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Object oriented DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	2.37
Rank	#110	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	7.57
Rank	#47	Overall
	#30	Relational DBMS

Score	93.76
Rank	#12	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	1.08
Rank	#179	Overall
	#6	Object oriented DBMS
	#9	Vector DBMS

Score	0.13
Rank	#330	Overall
	#45	Document stores

Website

www.4d.com

www.h2database.com

www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/access

github.com/objectbox
objectbox.io

github.com/xtdb/xtdb
www.xtdb.com

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

www.h2database.com/html/main.html

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

docs.objectbox.io

www.xtdb.com/docs

Developer

4D, Inc

Thomas Mueller

Microsoft

ObjectBox Limited

Juxt Ltd.

Initial release

1984

2005

1992

2017

2019

Current release

v20, April 2023

2.2.220, July 2023

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

4.0 (May 2024)

1.19, September 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

dual-licence (Mozilla public license, Eclipse public license)

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Bindings are released under Apache 2.0

Apache License 2.0

Open Source

MIT License

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

Java

C++

C and C++

Clojure

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Android
Any POSIX system
Docker
iOS
Linux
macOS
QNX
Windows

All OS with a Java 8 (and higher) VM
Linux

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, plus "flex" map-like types

yes, extensible-data-notation format

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

limited SQL, making use of Apache Calcite

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

Proprietary native API

HTTP REST
JDBC

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

Java

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java (JDBC-ODBC)
VBA
Visual Basic.NET

C
C++
Dart (Flutter)
Go
Java
Kotlin
Python
Swift

Clojure
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Java Stored Procedures and User-Defined Functions

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

With clustering: 2 database servers on different computers operate on identical copies of a database

none

Data sync between devices allowing occasional connected databases to work completely offline

yes, each node contains all data

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

but no files for transaction logging

yes

yes, flexibel persistency by using storage technologies like Apache Kafka, RocksDB or LMDB

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

a simple user-level security was built in till version Access 2003

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

News

MongoDB Realm & Device Sync alternatives – ObjectBox
17 September 2024

Local AI – what it is and why we need it
11 September 2024

First on-device Vector Database (aka Semantic Index) for iOS
24 July 2024

Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) with vector databases: Expanding AI Capabilities
18 June 2024

The on-device Vector Database for Android and Java
29 May 2024

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis are the winners of the March ranking
2 March 2016, Paul Andlinger

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MS Access drops in DB-Engines Ranking
2 May 2013, Paul Andlinger

Microsoft SQL Server regained rank 2 in the DB-Engines popularity ranking
3 December 2012, Matthias Gelbmann

New DB-Engines Ranking shows the popularity of database management systems
3 October 2012, Matthias Gelbmann, Paul Andlinger

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Recent citations in the news

I live with MS: Access to affordable healthcare is my lifeline | Opinion
14 August 2024, Miami Herald

Abusing Microsoft Access "Linked Table" Feature to Perform NTLM Forced Authentication Attacks
9 November 2023, Check Point Research

Hackers Exploit Microsoft Access Feature to Steal Windows User’s NTLM Tokens
11 November 2023, CybersecurityNews

Access Migration to Power Apps and Dataverse is released to General Availability
11 May 2022, microsoft.com

ENGINEERING/PROJECT SOFTWARE: Program eases access to project data
16 February 2024, Offshore magazine

provided by Google News

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