DBMS > 4D vs. dBASE vs. Spark SQL vs. SQLite vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison 4D vs. dBASE vs. Spark SQL vs. SQLite vs. Weaviate

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.

Spark SQL is a component on top of 'Spark Core' for structured data processing

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Vector 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	18.96
Rank	#33	Overall
	#20	Relational DBMS

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

developer.4d.com

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

spark.apache.org/docs/latest/sql-programming-guide.html

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

4D, Inc

Asthon Tate

Apache Software Foundation

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

1984

1979

2014

2000

2019

Current release

v20, April 2023

dBASE 2019, 2019

3.5.0 ( 2.13), September 2023

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

Public Domain

Open Source

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

Scala

Server operating systems

OS X
Windows

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

Linux
OS X
Windows

server-less

Data scheme

yes

dynamic column types

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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 data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

close to SQL 92

SQL-like DML and DDL statements

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

GraphQL is used as query language

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.

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

4D proprietary IDE
PHP

dBase proprietary IDE

Java
Python
R
Scala

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

yes, utilizing Spark Core

none

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

none

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

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

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

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

Access rights for users and roles

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
» more

Competitive advantages

Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
» more

Typical application scenarios

As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
» more

Key customers

All companies that have data.
» more

Market metrics

As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
» more

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.