DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. FileMaker vs. Microsoft Access vs. PostGIS vs. SwayDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. FileMaker vs. Microsoft Access vs. PostGIS vs. SwayDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Hosted, scalable database service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

FileMaker is a cross-platform RDBMS that includes a GUI frontend.

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.)

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

An embeddable, non-blocking, type-safe key-value store for single or multiple disks and in-memory storage

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Spatial DBMS

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

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

Score	74.45
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	47.91
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	101.16
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	21.72
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Score	0.04
Rank	#387	Overall
	#61	Key-value stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.claris.com/filemaker

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

postgis.net

swaydb.simer.au

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

postgis.net/documentation

Developer

Amazon

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Microsoft

Simer Plaha

Initial release

2012

1983

1992

2005

2018

Current release

19.4.1, November 2021

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

3.4.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Open Source

GPL v2.0

Open Source

GNU Affero GPL V3.0

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++

Scala

Server operating systems

hosted

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

A http query request can return the data in XML format

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

via plugins

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

PHP

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java (JDBC-ODBC)
VBA
Visual Basic.NET

Java
Kotlin
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

yes

based on PostgreSQL

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

none

yes

based on PostgreSQL

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

ACID across one or more tables within a single AWS account and region

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

Atomic execution of operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

but no files for transaction logging

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

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

simple rights management via user accounts and connection to external directory services

a simple user-level security was built in till version Access 2003

yes

based on PostgreSQL

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