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

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

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

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

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

Primary database model

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

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational 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

Score	2.52
Rank	#109	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

www.ibm.com/products/informix

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

questdb.io

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

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

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

questdb.io/docs

Developer

4D, Inc

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

QuestDB Technology Inc

Initial release

1984

2014

2005

2014

Current release

v20, April 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

5.3.3, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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++ and Java

C#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

JSON types

partial

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

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

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

SQL with time-series extensions

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

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

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

.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

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

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

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, with selectable consistency level

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

yes

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

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

ACID for single-table writes

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

through memory mapped files

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

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

NCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
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Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
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Competitive advantages

NCache is 100% .NET/ .NET Core based which fully supports ASP.NET Core Sessions ,...
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High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
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Typical application scenarios

NCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
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Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
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Key customers

Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
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Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
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Market metrics

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

NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
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Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.