DBMS > FileMaker vs. Informix vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft Access vs. SAP HANA

System Properties Comparison FileMaker vs. Informix vs. Lovefield vs. Microsoft Access vs. SAP HANA

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

Embeddable relational database for web apps written in pure JavaScript

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.)

In-memory, column based data store. Available as appliance or cloud service

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS

with SAP Hana, Enterprise Edition
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	48.20
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	0.29
Rank	#293	Overall
	#133	Relational DBMS

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	44.69
Rank	#22	Overall
	#16	Relational DBMS

Website

www.claris.com/filemaker

www.ibm.com/products/informix

google.github.io/lovefield

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

www.sap.com/products/hana.html

Technical documentation

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

github.com/google/lovefield/blob/master/docs/spec_index.md

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

help.sap.com/hana

Developer

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Google

Microsoft

SAP

Initial release

1983

1984

2014

1992

2010

Current release

19.4.1, November 2021

14.10.FC5, November 2020

2.1.12, February 2017

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

2.0 SPS07 (April 4, 2023), April 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

also available as a cloud based service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

JavaScript

C++

Server operating systems

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

tested with Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Appliance or cloud-service

Data scheme

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

via plugins

yes

SQL-like query language

via JavaScript builder pattern

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

APIs and other access methods

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

PHP

.Net
C
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

JavaScript

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

SQLScript, R

Triggers

yes

Using read-only observers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

none

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

yes

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

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

yes, by using IndexedDB or the cloud service Firebase Realtime Database

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

using MemoryDB

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

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

yes

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