DBMS > dBASE vs. Firebird vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison dBASE vs. Firebird vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. Realm

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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.

Firebird is an open source RDBMS forked from Borland's InterBase

Microsofts flagship relational DBMS

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	10.34
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	20.82
Rank	#30	Overall
	#18	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Website

www.dbase.com

www.firebirdsql.org

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

realm.io

Technical documentation

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

www.firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals

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

realm.io/docs

Developer

Asthon Tate

Firebird Foundation

Microsoft

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

1979

2000

As fork of Borland's InterBase

1989

2014

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

5.0.0, January 2024

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Initial Developer's Public License

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

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 and C++

C++

Server operating systems

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

AIX
FreeBSD
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
server-less

Firebird Embedded Server
Solaris
Unix
Windows

Linux
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

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

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

APIs and other access methods

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

ADO.NET
C/C++ API
JDBC

Jaybird
ODBC
OLE DB

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

Supported programming languages

dBase proprietary IDE

C
C#
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Lua
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

PSQL

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

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

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

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Source-replica replication

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

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

Features a multi-generational MVCC architecture, readers do not block writers

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

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

yes

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