DBMS > dBASE vs. FileMaker vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. IBM Db2 vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison dBASE vs. FileMaker vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. IBM Db2 vs. SQLite

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.

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

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

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

Score	128.46
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

www.dbase.com

www.claris.com/filemaker

cloud.google.com/bigtable

www.ibm.com/products/db2

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Asthon Tate

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Google

IBM

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

1979

1983

2015

1983

host version

2000

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

19.4.1, November 2021

12.1, October 2016

3.46.0 (23 May 2024), May 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free version is available

Open Source

Public Domain

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

C and C++

Server operating systems

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

server-less

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

via plugins

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

dBase proprietary IDE

PHP

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

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

yes

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

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

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

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

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

Atomic single-row operations

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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