DBMS > 4D vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NCache vs. Redis vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. NCache vs. Redis vs. TimesTen

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

Popular in-memory data platform used as a cache, message broker, and database that can be deployed on-premises, across clouds, and hybrid environments

Redis focuses on performance so most of its design decisions prioritize high performance and very low latencies.

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Key-value store

Multiple data types and a rich set of operations, as well as configurable data expiration, eviction and persistence

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

Document store

with RedisJSON
Graph DBMS

with RedisGraph
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

with RediSearch
Time Series DBMS

with RedisTimeSeries
Vector DBMS

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

Score	2.68
Rank	#110	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	29.85
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	0.98
Rank	#196	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Score	156.44
Rank	#6	Overall
	#1	Key-value stores

Score	1.35
Rank	#165	Overall
	#75	Relational DBMS

Website

www.4d.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

redis.com
redis.io

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

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

docs.redis.com/latest/index.html
redis.io/docs

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

Developer

4D, Inc

Microsoft

Alachisoft

Redis project core team, inspired by Salvatore Sanfilippo

Development sponsored by Redis Inc.

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

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

Initial release

1984

2014

2005

2009

1998

Current release

v20, April 2023

5.3.3, April 2024

7.2.4, January 2024

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

Open Source

source-available extensions (modules), commercial licenses for Redis Enterprise

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.

Aiven for Redis: Fully managed in-memory key-value store for all your caching and speedy lookup needs.

Implementation language

C#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

ported and maintained by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.

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

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

partial

Supported data types are strings, hashes, lists, sets and sorted sets, bit arrays, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes

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

yes

with RediSearch module

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

SQL-like query language

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

with RediSQL module

yes

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

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

proprietary protocol

RESP - REdis Serialization Protocol

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

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

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Crystal
D
Dart
Elixir
Erlang
Fancy
Go
Haskell
Haxe
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Pascal
Perl
PHP
Prolog
Pure Data
Python
R
Rebol
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Swift
Tcl
Visual Basic

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

JavaScript

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

Lua; Redis Functions coming in Redis 7 (slides and Github)

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

JavaScript

yes

Notifications

publish/subscribe channels provide some trigger functionality; RedisGears

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

Sharding

Automatic hash-based sharding with support for hash-tags for manual sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, with selectable consistency level

Multi-source replication

with Redis Enterprise Pack
Source-replica replication

Chained replication is supported

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

yes

through RedisGears

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
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

Eventual Consistency
Causal consistency can be enabled in Active-Active databases
Strong consistency with Redis Raft
Strong eventual consistency with Active-Active

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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

Atomic execution of command blocks and scripts and optimistic locking

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Data access is serialized by the server

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Configurable mechanisms for persistency via snapshots and/or operations logs

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

User concepts

Access control

Users and groups

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

Access Control Lists (ACLs): redis.io/docs/management/security/acl
LDAP and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Redis Enterprise
Mutual TLS authentication: redis.io/docs/management/security/encryption
Password-based authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

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