DBMS > dBASE vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TerarkDB

System Properties Comparison dBASE vs. Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. TerarkDB

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.

A horizontally scalable, globally consistent, relational database service. It is the externalization of the core Google database that runs the biggest aspects of Google, like Ads and Google Play.

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

A key-value store forked from RocksDB with advanced compression algorithms. It can be used standalone or as a storage engine for MySQL and MongoDB

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key-value 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	2.89
Rank	#103	Overall
	#52	Relational DBMS

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	0.00
Rank	#383	Overall
	#60	Key-value stores

Website

www.dbase.com

cloud.google.com/spanner

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

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

github.com/bytedance/terarkdb

Technical documentation

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

cloud.google.com/spanner/docs

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

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

bytedance.larkoffice.com/docs/doccnZmYFqHBm06BbvYgjsHHcKc

Developer

Asthon Tate

Google

Microsoft

ByteDance, originally Terark

Initial release

1979

2017

1992

1989

2016

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

restricted free version is available

commercial

restricted open source version 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++

Server operating systems

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

hosted

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux
Windows

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

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

Query statements complying to ANSI 2011

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

APIs and other access methods

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
JDBC

At present, JDBC supports read-only queries. No support for DDL or DML statements.
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

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

C++ API
Java API

Supported programming languages

dBase proprietary IDE

Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

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++
Java

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

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

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

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

Multi-source replication with 3 replicas for regional instances.

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

using Google Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

by using interleaved tables, this features focuses more on performance improvements than on 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

Strict serializable isolation

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

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

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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