DBMS > 4D vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. searchxml vs. TinkerGraph

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. searchxml vs. TinkerGraph

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

DBMS for structured and unstructured content wrapped with an application server

A lightweight, in-memory graph engine that serves as a reference implementation of the TinkerPop3 API

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Native XML DBMS
Search engine

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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	2.47
Rank	#110	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	27.71
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	3.80
Rank	#81	Overall
	#43	Relational DBMS

Score	0.03
Rank	#390	Overall
	#7	Native XML DBMS
	#24	Search engines

Score	0.13
Rank	#345	Overall
	#35	Graph DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.searchxml.net/category/products

tinkerpop.apache.org/docs/current/reference/#tinkergraph-gremlin

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

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

www.searchxml.net/support/handouts

Developer

4D, Inc

Microsoft

informationpartners gmbh

Initial release

1984

2014

2019

2015

2009

Current release

v20, April 2023

cloud service with continuous releases

1.0

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

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++

Java

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

hosted

Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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 properties auto-indexed by default

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

SQL-like query language

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

APIs and other access methods

ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

by using 4D Mobile
SOAP webservices

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

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

RESTful HTTP API
WebDAV
XQuery
XSLT

TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

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

C++

most other programming languages supported via APIs

Groovy
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

yes

on the application server

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

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

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

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

yes

sychronisation to multiple collections

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

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

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

Immediate Consistency

none

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

multiple readers, single writer

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Azure Active Directory Authentication

Domain, group and role-based access control at the document level and for application services

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