DBMS > 4D vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SAP Advantage Database Server vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. SAP Advantage Database Server vs. TimesTen

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

SAP Advantage Database Server seems to be discontinued. Therefore it is excluded from the DB-Engines Ranking.

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Low-cost RDBMS with access to ISAM and FoxPro data structures

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

If a column is of type dynamic docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types/dynamic then it's possible to add arbitrary JSON documents in this cell
Event Store

this is the general usage pattern at Microsoft. Billing, Logs, Telemetry events are stored in ADX and the state of an individual entity is defined by the arg_max(timestamps)
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

support for complex search expressions docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/parseoperator FTS, Geospatial docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/geo-point-to-geohash-function distributed search -> ADX acts as a distributed search engine
Time Series DBMS

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer/time-series-analysis

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

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	1.31
Rank	#163	Overall
	#74	Relational DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

google.github.io/lovefield

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.sap.com/products/advantage-database-server.html

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/timesten.html

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

Developer

4D, Inc

Google

Microsoft

Sybase, SAP

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

1984

2014

2019

1993

1998

Current release

v20, April 2023

2.1.12, February 2017

cloud service with continuous releases

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

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

JavaScript

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

hosted

Linux
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

bool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types

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 fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

yes

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

Microsoft SQL Server communication protocol (MS-TDS)
RESTful HTTP API

.NET Client API
ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

JavaScript

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PowerShell
Python
R

Delphi
Perl
PHP

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

yes

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

Using read-only observers

yes

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/management/updatepolicy

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

none

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

Multi-source replication

CONFLICT Trigger to resolve replication conflicts
Source-replica replication

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Spark connector (open source): github.com/Azure/azure-kusto-spark

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

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, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

yes

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

using MemoryDB

caching of (temporary) tables can be configured

yes

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

Azure Active Directory Authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

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Related products and services

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More resources

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