DBMS > 4D vs. dBASE vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Oracle NoSQL

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. dBASE vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Oracle NoSQL

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

dBase was one of the first databases with a development environment on PC's. Its latest version dBase V is still sold as dBase classic, which needs a DOS Emulation. The up-to-date product is dBase plus.

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.)

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A multi-model, scalable, distributed NoSQL database, designed to provide highly reliable, flexible, and available data management across a configurable set of storage nodes

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

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	10.34
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	2.95
Rank	#100	Overall
	#17	Document stores
	#17	Key-value stores
	#50	Relational DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

www.dbase.com

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

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

www.oracle.com/database/nosql/technologies/nosql

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

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

docs.oracle.com/en/database/other-databases/nosql-database/index.html

Developer

4D, Inc

Asthon Tate

Microsoft

Oracle

Initial release

1984

1979

1992

1989

2011

Current release

v20, April 2023

dBASE 2019, 2019

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

23.3, December 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Proprietary for Enterprise Edition (Oracle Database EE license has Oracle NoSQL database EE covered: details)

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

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Implementation language

C++

Java

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux
Windows

Linux
Solaris SPARC/x86

Data scheme

yes

Support Fixed schema and Schema-less deployment with the ability to interoperate between them.

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

optional

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

yes

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

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

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

dBase proprietary IDE

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

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

C
C#
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

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

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

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

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Electable source-replica replication per shard. Support distributed global deployment with Multi-region table feature

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

depending on configuration

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

not for dBase internal data, but IDE does support transactions when accessing external DBMS

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

configurable

ACID within a storage node (=shard)

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

but no files for transaction logging

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

off heap cache

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

Access rights for users and roles

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and roles

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