DBMS > FoundationDB vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. SpaceTime

System Properties Comparison FoundationDB vs. InterSystems IRIS vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. SpaceTime

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market. As a consequence, the product was removed from the DB-Engines ranking. In April 2018, Apple open-sourced FoundationDB and it therefore reappears in the ranking.

Description

Ordered key-value store. Core features are complimented by layers.

A containerised multi-model DBMS, interoperability and analytics data platform with wide capabilities for vertical and horizontal scalability

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.)

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

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

Primary database model

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Document store
Key-value store
Object oriented DBMS
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Spatial DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	1.03
Rank	#190	Overall
	#31	Document stores
	#28	Key-value stores
	#89	Relational DBMS

Score	4.05
Rank	#83	Overall
	#14	Document stores
	#10	Key-value stores
	#1	Object oriented DBMS
	#45	Relational DBMS

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#7	Spatial DBMS

Website

github.com/apple/foundationdb

www.intersystems.com/products/intersystems-iris

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

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.mireo.com/spacetime

Technical documentation

apple.github.io/foundationdb

docs.intersystems.com/irislatest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

Developer

FoundationDB

InterSystems

Microsoft

Mireo

Initial release

2013

2018

1992

2014

2020

Current release

6.2.28, November 2020

2023.3, June 2023

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C++

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

AIX
Linux
macOS
Ubuntu
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

some layers support schemas

depending on used data model

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

some layers support typing

yes

JSON types

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

All properties auto-indexed by default

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

SQL-like query language

A subset of ANSI SQL is implemented

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

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

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

C#
C++
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

in SQL-layer only

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Fixed-grid hypercubes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Source-replica replication

none

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Real-time block device replication (DRBD)

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

in SQL-layer only

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

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

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

InterSystems IRIS is a complete cloud-first data platform which includes a multi-model...
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