DBMS > EXASOL vs. Firebird vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Rockset

System Properties Comparison EXASOL vs. Firebird vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Rockset

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

High-performance, in-memory, MPP database specifically designed for in-memory analytics.

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

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.)

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A scalable, reliable search and analytics service in the cloud, built on RocksDB

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS
Search engine

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

Score	1.76
Rank	#139	Overall
	#62	Relational DBMS

Score	20.50
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	101.16
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	821.56
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.82
Rank	#212	Overall
	#36	Document stores

Website

www.exasol.com

www.firebirdsql.org

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

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

rockset.com

Technical documentation

www.exasol.com/resources

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

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

docs.rockset.com

Developer

Exasol

Firebird Foundation

Microsoft

Rockset

Initial release

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1992

1989

2019

Current release

5.0.0, January 2024

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

dynamic typing

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

ingestion from XML files supported

Secondary indexes

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

Read-only SQL queries, including JOINs

APIs and other access methods

.Net
JDBC
ODBC
WebSocket

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

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

HTTP REST

Supported programming languages

Java
Lua
Python
R

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

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

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

user defined functions

PSQL

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

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

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

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

Automatic sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual 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

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

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, groups and roles according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users and organizations can be defined via Rockset console

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.