DBMS > Cassandra vs. FileMaker vs. Interbase vs. Microsoft Access vs. Postgres-XL

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. FileMaker vs. Interbase vs. Microsoft Access vs. Postgres-XL

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

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

Light-weight proven RDBMS

originally from Borland

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.)

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

Primary database model

Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	48.20
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	4.61
Rank	#72	Overall
	#39	Relational DBMS

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	0.49
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.claris.com/filemaker

www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

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

www.postgres-xl.org

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

docs.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Embarcadero

Microsoft

Initial release

2008

1983

1984

1992

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

19.4.1, November 2021

InterBase 2020, December 2019

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

10 R1, October 2018

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Open Source

Mozilla public license

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.

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

Android
iOS
Linux
OS X
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

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

export as XML data possible

yes

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes

via plugins

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

PHP

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
Object Pascal
PHP
Ruby

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

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Interbase procedure and trigger language

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

none

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

Interbase Change Views

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

MVCC

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Multiversion concurreny control

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 can be defined per object

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Licensing and pricing models

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