DBMS > FileMaker vs. Microsoft Access vs. mSQL vs. MySQL vs. SpaceTime

System Properties Comparison FileMaker vs. Microsoft Access vs. mSQL vs. MySQL vs. SpaceTime

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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.)

mSQL (Mini SQL) is a simple and lightweight RDBMS

Widely used open source RDBMS

SpaceTime is a spatio-temporal DBMS with a focus on performance.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Spatial DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Relational 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	1.27
Rank	#167	Overall
	#77	Relational DBMS

Score	1083.74
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#7	Spatial DBMS

Website

www.claris.com/filemaker

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

hughestech.com.au/products/msql

www.mysql.com

www.mireo.com/spacetime

Technical documentation

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

dev.mysql.com/doc

Developer

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Microsoft

Hughes Technologies

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Mireo

Initial release

1983

1992

1994

1995

2020

Current release

19.4.1, November 2021

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

4.4, October 2021

8.3.0, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

free licenses can be provided

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

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Implementation language

C++

C and C++

C++

Server operating systems

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris SPARC/x86
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

via plugins

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

no subqueries, aggregate functions, views, foreign keys, triggers

yes

with proprietary extensions

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

APIs and other access methods

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

PHP

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

C
C++
Delphi
Java
Perl
PHP
Tcl

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

C#
C++
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Fixed-grid hypercubes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Real-time block device replication (DRBD)

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

none

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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

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

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

yes

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