DBMS > Couchbase vs. Interbase vs. Microsoft Access vs. ObjectBox vs. TimesTen

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. Interbase vs. Microsoft Access vs. ObjectBox vs. TimesTen

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

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.)

Extremely fast embedded database for small devices, IoT and Mobile

In-Memory RDBMS compatible to Oracle

Primary database model

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

Time Series DBMS

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

Score	18.46
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	5.04
Rank	#71	Overall
	#39	Relational DBMS

Score	105.40
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	1.22
Rank	#172	Overall
	#5	Object oriented DBMS

Score	1.35
Rank	#165	Overall
	#75	Relational DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

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

objectbox.io

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

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

docs.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

docs.objectbox.io

docs.oracle.com/database/timesten-18.1

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Embarcadero

Microsoft

ObjectBox Limited

Oracle, TimesTen Performance Software, HP

originally founded in HP Labs it was acquired by Oracle in 2005

Initial release

2011

1984

1992

2017

1998

Current release

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

InterBase 2020, December 2019

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

11 Release 2 (11.2.2.8.0)

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Open Source

Apache License 2.0

commercial

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 and C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

Android
iOS
Linux
OS X
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Android
iOS
Linux
macOS
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

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.

export as XML data possible

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

Proprietary native API

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

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

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

C
C++
Dart
Go
Java
JavaScript

planned (as of Jan 2019)
Kotlin
Python

planned (as of Jan 2019)
Swift

C
C++
Java
PL/SQL

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

PL/SQL

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

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

Interbase Change Views

none

online/offline synchronization between client and server

Multi-source replication
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

Immediate Consistency or Eventual Consistency depending on configuration

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

by means of logfiles and checkpoints

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.

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

News

In-Memory Database Use Cases
15 February 2024

Data Viewer for Objects – announcing ObjectBox Admin
14 November 2023

Vector Databases for Edge AI
9 August 2023

Vector Database Release for Flutter / Dart + Python
13 June 2023

SQLite and SQLite alternatives – a comprehensive overview
7 June 2023

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