DBMS > Couchbase vs. FileMaker vs. Interbase vs. Microsoft Access vs. Oracle Berkeley DB

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. FileMaker vs. Interbase vs. Microsoft Access vs. Oracle Berkeley DB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

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.)

Widely used in-process key-value store

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

supports sorted and unsorted key sets
Native XML DBMS

in the Oracle Berkeley DB XML version

Secondary database models

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

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

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	47.91
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	4.08
Rank	#75	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	101.16
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	2.01
Rank	#126	Overall
	#21	Key-value stores
	#3	Native XML DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

www.claris.com/filemaker

www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

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

www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/berkeleydb.html

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

docs.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

docs.oracle.com/cd/E17076_05/html/index.html

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Embarcadero

Microsoft

Oracle

originally developed by Sleepycat, which was acquired by Oracle

Initial release

2011

1983

1984

1992

1994

Current release

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

19.4.1, November 2021

InterBase 2020, December 2019

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

18.1.40, May 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Open Source

commercial license available

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

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C++

C, Java, C++ (depending on the Berkeley DB edition)

Server operating systems

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

AIX
Android
FreeBSD
iOS
Linux
OS X
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

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

export as XML data possible

yes

only with the Berkeley DB XML edition

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

yes

via plugins

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

SQL interfaced based on SQLite is available

APIs and other access methods

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
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

Figaro is a .Net framework assembly that extends Berkeley DB XML into an embeddable database engine for .NET
others

Third-party libraries to manipulate Berkeley DB files are available for many languages
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party binding
Perl
Python
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

yes

Interbase procedure and trigger language

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

only for the SQL API

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

Interbase Change Views

none

Source-replica replication

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

selectable on a per-operation basis

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

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

Ephemeral buckets

yes

User concepts

Access control

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

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

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