DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. NCache

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Informix vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. NCache

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

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

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

Open-Source and Enterprise in-memory Key-Value Store

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Search engine

Using distributed Lucene

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

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.94
Rank	#195	Overall
	#29	Key-value stores

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.ibm.com/products/informix

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

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

www.alachisoft.com/ncache

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

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

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

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

www.alachisoft.com/resources/docs

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

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.

Microsoft

Alachisoft

Initial release

2012

1984

1992

1989

2005

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

5.3.3, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Enterprise Edition available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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Implementation language

C, C++ and Java

C++

C#, .NET, .NET Core, Java

Server operating systems

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

partial

Supported data types are Lists, Queues, Hashsets, Dictionary and Counter

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

SQL-like query syntax and LINQ for searching the cache. Cache Synchronization with SQL Server using SQL dependency.

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
JSON API

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

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

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

IDistributedCache
JCache
LINQ
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

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

.Net
.Net Core
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

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

support for stored procedures with SQL-Server CLR

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Notifications

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

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

yes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

yes, with selectable consistency level

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency
Strong Eventual Consistency over WAN with Conflict Resolution using Bridge Topology

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

optimistic locking and pessimistic locking

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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

yes, based on authentication and database rules

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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Authentication to access the cache via Active Directory/LDAP (possible roles: user, administrator)

More information provided by the system vendor

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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