DBMS > FatDB vs. FileMaker vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

System Properties Comparison FatDB vs. FileMaker vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

FatDB/FatCloud has ceased operations as a company with February 2014. FatDB is discontinued and excluded from the ranking.

Description

A .NET NoSQL DBMS that can integrate with and extend SQL Server.

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

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.)

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	48.20
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Website

www.claris.com/filemaker

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

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

Technical documentation

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

FatCloud

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Microsoft

Initial release

2012

1983

1992

2014

Current release

19.4.1, November 2021

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

Windows

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

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

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

Via inetgration in SQL Server

yes

via plugins

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

.NET Client API
LINQ
RESTful HTTP API
RPC
Windows WCF Bindings

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Supported programming languages

PHP

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

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

via applications

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

via applications

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

none

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session 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

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

but no files for transaction logging

yes

User concepts

Access control

Can implement custom security layer via applications

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

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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