DBMS > dBASE vs. FileMaker vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison dBASE vs. FileMaker vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TimescaleDB

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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.

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	11.18
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	49.73
Rank	#20	Overall
	#14	Relational DBMS

Score	829.80
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	4.87
Rank	#74	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

www.dbase.com

www.claris.com/filemaker

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

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

www.claris.com/resources/documentation

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

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Asthon Tate

Claris

a subsidiary of Apple

Microsoft

Timescale

Initial release

1979

1983

1989

2017

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

19.4.1, November 2021

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

2.13.0, November 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Apache 2.0

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

C++

Server operating systems

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

iOS

client part only
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data 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

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

via plugins

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

Filemaker WebDirect
JDBC
ODBC

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

dBase proprietary IDE

PHP

C#
C++
Delphi
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Visual Basic

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

yes

Transact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Java

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

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

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Source-replica replication, warm standby

since Version 14

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

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

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

ACID

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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