DBMS > 4D vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. NCache vs. STSdb

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. NCache vs. STSdb

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Application development environment with integrated database management system

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

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

Key-Value Store with special method for indexing

optimized for high performance using a special indexing method

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Key-value store

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

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

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

Score	2.58
Rank	#108	Overall
	#54	Relational DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	0.94
Rank	#195	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Score	0.04
Rank	#360	Overall
	#52	Key-value stores

Website

www.4d.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

github.com/STSSoft/STSdb4

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

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

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

Developer

4D, Inc

Microsoft

Alachisoft

STS Soft SC

Initial release

1984

2019

2005

2011

Current release

v20, April 2023

cloud service with continuous releases

5.3.3, April 2024

4.0.8, September 2015

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

Open Source

GPLv2, commercial license available

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#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux
Windows

Windows

Data scheme

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

schema-free

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

partial

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

yes

primitive types and user defined types (classes)

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

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

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

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

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

.NET Client API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

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

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

C#
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

Triggers

yes

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

yes

Notifications

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

yes

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

yes, with selectable consistency level

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

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

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

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

Azure Active Directory Authentication

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

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

NCache has been the market leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005 . NCache...
» more

Competitive advantages

NCache is 100% .NET/ .NET Core based which fully supports ASP.NET Core Sessions ,...
» more

Typical application scenarios

NCache enables industries like retail, finance, banking IoT, travel, ecommerce, healthcare...
» more

Key customers

Bank of America, Citi, Natures Way, Charter Spectrum, Barclays, Henry Schein, GBM,...
» more

Market metrics

Market Leader in .NET Distributed Caching since 2005.
» more

Licensing and pricing models

NCache Open Source is free on an as-is basis without any support. NCache Enterprise...
» more

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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.

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More resources

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