DBMS > dBASE vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft Access vs. RocksDB vs. SAP IQ

System Properties Comparison dBASE vs. FoundationDB vs. Microsoft Access vs. RocksDB vs. SAP IQ

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Created as commercial project in 2013, FoundationDB has been acquired by Apple in March 2015 and was withdrawn from the market.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

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.

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

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.)

Embeddable persistent key-value store optimized for fast storage (flash and RAM)

Columnar RDBMS optimized for Big Data analytics

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store

supported via specific layer
Key-value store
Relational DBMS

supported via specific SQL-layer

Relational DBMS

Key-value store

Relational DBMS

column-oriented

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

Score	10.34
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

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

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	3.65
Rank	#85	Overall
	#11	Key-value stores

Score	2.75
Rank	#104	Overall
	#53	Relational DBMS

Website

www.dbase.com

github.com/apple/foundationdb

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

rocksdb.org

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sybase-iq-big-data-management.html

Technical documentation

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

apple.github.io/foundationdb

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_IQ

Developer

Asthon Tate

FoundationDB

Microsoft

Facebook, Inc.

SAP, formerly Sybase

Initial release

1979

2013

1992

2013

1994

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

6.2.28, November 2020

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

9.2.1, May 2024

16.1 SPS04, April 2019

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Open Source

BSD

commercial

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

Linux
OS X
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

some layers support schemas

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

some layers support typing

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.

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

supported in specific SQL layer only

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

APIs and other access methods

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

C++ API
Java API

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

dBase proprietary IDE

.Net
C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Swift

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

C
C++
Go
Java
Perl
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

in SQL-layer only

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

none

horizontal partitioning

shared disk or shared nothing architectures with SAP IQ Multiplexer

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

yes

none

yes

SAP/Sybase Replication Server

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Hadoop integration

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Linearizable consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

in SQL-layer only

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

but no files for transaction logging

yes

ACID

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

Access rights for users and roles

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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