DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. LokiJS vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Sphinx

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. LokiJS vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Sphinx

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.

In-memory JavaScript DBMS

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 search engine for searching in data from different sources, e.g. relational databases

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

Search engine

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	0.43
Rank	#264	Overall
	#42	Document stores

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	5.98
Rank	#56	Overall
	#5	Search engines

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

github.com/techfort/LokiJS

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

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

sphinxsearch.com

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

techfort.github.io/LokiJS

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

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

sphinxsearch.com/docs

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

Sphinx Technologies Inc.

Initial release

2012

2014

1992

1989

2001

Current release

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

3.5.1, February 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial licence available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

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Implementation language

JavaScript

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

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

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
NetBSD
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

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

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

full-text index on all search fields

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

SQL-like query language (SphinxQL)

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JavaScript API

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

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

Proprietary protocol

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

JavaScript

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

C++

unofficial client library
Java
Perl

unofficial client library
PHP
Python
Ruby

unofficial client library

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

View functions in JavaScript

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

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

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

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

Sharding

Partitioning is done manually, search queries against distributed index is supported

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

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

none

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

yes

atomic operations within a single collection possible

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

Serialization of a DB in a Node.JS/Cordova/PhoneGap environment. Usage of the IndexedDB-API in a browser.

yes

but no files for transaction logging

yes

The original contents of fields are not stored in the Sphinx index.

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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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