DBMS > dBASE vs. FileMaker vs. GigaSpaces vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

System Properties Comparison dBASE vs. FileMaker vs. GigaSpaces vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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.

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

High performance in-memory data grid platform, powering three products: Smart Cache, Smart ODS (Operational Data Store), Smart Augmented Transactions

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store
Object oriented DBMS

Values are user defined objects

Key-value store
Wide column store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Secondary database models

Graph DBMS
Search engine

Spatial DBMS

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

Score	10.34
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	48.20
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	0.97
Rank	#192	Overall
	#32	Document stores
	#6	Object oriented DBMS

Score	3.26
Rank	#92	Overall
	#13	Key-value stores
	#8	Wide column stores

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

Website

www.dbase.com

www.claris.com/filemaker

www.gigaspaces.com

cloud.google.com/bigtable

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

Technical documentation

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

docs.gigaspaces.com/latest/landing.html

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

Asthon Tate

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Gigaspaces Technologies

Google

Microsoft

Initial release

1979

1983

2000

2015

2014

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

19.4.1, November 2021

15.5, September 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache Version 2; Commercial licenses 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.

Implementation language

Java, C++, .Net

Server operating systems

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Data scheme

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

XML can be used for describing objects metadata

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

via plugins

SQL-99 for query and DML statements

SQL-like query language

APIs and other access methods

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

GigaSpaces LRMI
Hibernate
JCache
JDBC
JPA
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

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

Supported programming languages

dBase proprietary IDE

PHP

.Net
C++
Java
Python
Scala

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

yes

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

yes, event driven architecture

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

Multi-source replication

synchronous or asynchronous
Source-replica replication

synchronous or asynchronous

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Map-Reduce pattern can be built with XAP task executors

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable: ALL, QUORUM, ANY

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

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

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

ACID

Atomic single-row operations

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

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

Role-based access control

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

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