DBMS > Apache Drill vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

System Properties Comparison Apache Drill vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Schema-free SQL Query Engine for Hadoop, NoSQL and Cloud Storage

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

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.)

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Primary database model

Document store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.95
Rank	#127	Overall
	#23	Document stores
	#60	Relational DBMS

Score	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Website

drill.apache.org

cloud.google.com/spanner

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

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

Technical documentation

drill.apache.org/docs

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Google

Microsoft

Initial release

2012

2017

1992

2014

Current release

1.20.3, January 2023

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL SELECT statement is SQL:2003 compliant

yes

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

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

Supported programming languages

C++

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

none

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

Depending on the underlying data source

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.

Depending on the underlying data source

User concepts

Access control

Depending on the underlying data source

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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