DBMS > 4D vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. STSdb vs. Tigris

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. STSdb vs. Tigris

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

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

Key-Value Store with special method for indexing

optimized for high performance using a special indexing method

A horizontally scalable, ACID transactional, document database available both as a fully managed cloud service and for deployment on self-managed infrastructure

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Document store
Key-value store
Search engine
Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

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	101.16
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

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

Score	0.09
Rank	#363	Overall
	#49	Document stores
	#54	Key-value stores
	#22	Search engines
	#38	Time Series DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

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

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

github.com/STSSoft/STSdb4

www.tigrisdata.com

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

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

www.tigrisdata.com/docs

Developer

4D, Inc

Microsoft

STS Soft SC

Tigris Data, Inc.

Initial release

1984

1992

1989

2011

2022

Current release

v20, April 2023

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

4.0.8, September 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPLv2, commercial license available

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

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Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux
Windows

Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

primitive types and user defined types (classes)

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

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

.NET Client API

CLI Client
gRPC
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

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#
Java

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

yes

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

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

but no files for transaction logging

yes

yes, using FoundationDB

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

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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