DBMS > 4D vs. Informix vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. STSdb vs. XTDB

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Informix vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. STSdb vs. XTDB

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Key-Value Store with special method for indexing

optimized for high performance using a special indexing method

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

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	2.47
Rank	#110	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	17.12
Rank	#34	Overall
	#21	Relational DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.10
Rank	#357	Overall
	#51	Key-value stores

Score	0.18
Rank	#332	Overall
	#46	Document stores

Website

www.4d.com

www.ibm.com/products/informix

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

github.com/STSSoft/STSdb4

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

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

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

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

www.xtdb.com/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

STS Soft SC

Juxt Ltd.

Initial release

1984

1989

2011

2019

Current release

v20, April 2023

14.10.FC5, November 2020

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

4.0.8, September 2015

1.19, September 2021

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPLv2, commercial license available

Open Source

MIT License

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

C++

Clojure

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Linux
Windows

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

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

primitive types and user defined types (classes)

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

limited SQL, making use of Apache Calcite

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

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

.NET Client API

HTTP REST
JDBC

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

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

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

C#
Java

Clojure
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

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

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

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

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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