DBMS > dBASE vs. DuckDB vs. FileMaker vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. PostGIS

System Properties Comparison dBASE vs. DuckDB vs. FileMaker vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. PostGIS

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

dBase was one of the first databases with a development environment on PC's. Its latest version dBase V is still sold as dBase classic, which needs a DOS Emulation. The up-to-date product is dBase plus.

An embeddable, in-process, column-oriented SQL OLAP RDBMS

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

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Spatial DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	10.34
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	4.57
Rank	#74	Overall
	#40	Relational DBMS

Score	48.20
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	22.69
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Website

www.dbase.com

duckdb.org

www.claris.com/filemaker

www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server

postgis.net

Technical documentation

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

duckdb.org/docs

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

learn.microsoft.com/en-US/sql/sql-server

postgis.net/documentation

Developer

Asthon Tate

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Microsoft

Initial release

1979

2018

1983

1989

2005

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

0.10, February 2024

19.4.1, November 2021

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

3.4.2, February 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

MIT License

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL v2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

server-less

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

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

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

via plugins

yes

APIs and other access methods

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

Arrow Database Connectivity (ADBC)
CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)

Supported programming languages

dBase proprietary IDE

C
C#

3rd party driver
C++
Crystal

3rd party driver
Go

3rd party driver
Java
Lisp

3rd party driver
Python
R
Ruby

3rd party driver
Rust
Swift
Zig

3rd party driver

PHP

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

yes

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

tables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federation

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes

based on PostgreSQL

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

not for dBase internal data, but IDE does support transactions when accessing external DBMS

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

yes, multi-version concurrency control (MVCC)

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

based on PostgreSQL

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