DBMS > dBASE vs. Faircom DB vs. FileMaker vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server

System Properties Comparison dBASE vs. Faircom DB vs. FileMaker vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server

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.

Native high-speed multi-model DBMS for relational and key-value store data simultaneously accessible through SQL and NoSQL APIs.

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.)

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	11.18
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	0.24
Rank	#311	Overall
	#44	Key-value stores
	#140	Relational DBMS

Score	49.73
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	105.40
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	829.80
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Website

www.dbase.com

www.faircom.com/products/faircom-db

www.claris.com/filemaker

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

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

Technical documentation

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

docs.faircom.com/docs/en/UUID-7446ae34-a1a7-c843-c894-d5322e395184.html

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

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

Developer

Asthon Tate

FairCom Corporation

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Microsoft

Initial release

1979

1983

1992

1989

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

V12, November 2020

19.4.1, November 2021

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Restricted, free version available

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

restricted free version is available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

Implementation language

ANSI C, C++

C++

Server operating systems

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
QNX
SCO
Solaris
VxWorks
Windows

easily portable to other OSs

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema free, schema optional, schema required, partial schema,

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

yes, ANSI SQL Types, JSON, typed binary structures

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

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes, ANSI SQL with proprietary extensions

yes

via plugins

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

APIs and other access methods

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

ADO.NET
Direct SQL
JDBC
JPA
ODBC
RESTful HTTP/JSON API
RESTful MQTT/JSON API
RPC

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

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

Supported programming languages

dBase proprietary IDE

.Net
C
C#
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js and browser)
PHP
Python
Visual Basic

PHP

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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

yes

.Net, JavaScript, C/C++

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

none

File partitioning, horizontal partitioning, sharding

Customizable business rules for table partitioning

none

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

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes, configurable to be parallel or serial, synchronous or asynchronous, uni-directional or bi-directional, ACID-consistent or eventually consistent (with custom conflict resolution).

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Tunable consistency per server, database, table, and transaction

Immediate 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

tunable from ACID to Eventually Consistent

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Yes, tunable from durable to delayed durability to in-memory

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 and roles

Fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard with additional protections for files

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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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.