DBMS > 4D vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Trafodion vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. IBM Db2 vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Trafodion vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Apache Trafodion has been retired in 2021. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines Ranking.

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Transactional SQL-on-Hadoop DBMS

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

www.ibm.com/products/db2

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

trafodion.apache.org

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

trafodion.apache.org/documentation.html

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

4D, Inc

IBM

Microsoft

Apache Software Foundation, originally developed by HP

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

1984

1983

host version

1989

2014

2019

Current release

v20, April 2023

12.1, October 2016

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

2.3.0, February 2019

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free version is available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

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

C and C++

C++

C++, Java

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Linux
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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 data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

yes

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

All languages supporting JDBC/ODBC/ADO.Net

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

Java Stored Procedures

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes, via HBase

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

via user defined functions and HBase

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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