DBMS > IBM Db2 warehouse vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

System Properties Comparison IBM Db2 warehouse vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Cloud-based data warehousing service

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

Database as a Service offering with high compatibility to Microsoft SQL Server

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	1.34
Rank	#166	Overall
	#76	Relational DBMS

Score	105.40
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	29.85
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	78.40
Rank	#15	Overall
	#10	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/db2/warehouse

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

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database

Technical documentation

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql

Developer

IBM

Microsoft

Initial release

2014

1992

2014

2010

Current release

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

V12

License

Commercial or Open Source

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

hosted

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

hosted

Data scheme

yes

schema-free

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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.

Import/export of XML data possible

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

SQL-like query language

yes

APIs and other access methods

.NET Client API
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

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

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

PL/SQL, SQL PL

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

JavaScript

Transact SQL

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

JavaScript

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

none

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes, with always 3 replicas available

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

Immediate Consistency

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

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

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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