DBMS > Informix vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. OceanBase

System Properties Comparison Informix vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. OceanBase

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

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 distributed, high available RDBMS compatible with Oracle and MySQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Document store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Wide column store

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

Score	17.87
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	104.92
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	824.29
Rank	#3	Overall
	#3	Relational DBMS

Score	1.66
Rank	#147	Overall
	#68	Relational DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/informix

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

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

en.oceanbase.com

Technical documentation

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

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

en.oceanbase.com/docs/oceanbase-database

Developer

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Microsoft

OceanBase

previously Alibaba and Ant Group

Initial release

1984

1992

1989

2010

Current release

14.10.FC5, November 2020

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

SQL Server 2022, November 2022

4.3.0, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

restricted free version is available

Open Source

Commercial license available

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, C++ and Java

C++

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

Linux
Windows

Linux

Data scheme

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

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

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

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

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)
Proprietary native API
Table API

Supported programming languages

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

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

Ada

in MySQL-compatible model
C

in Oracle- and MySQL- compatible models
C++

in Oracle- and MySQL- compatible models
D

in MySQL-compatible model
Delphi

in MySQL-compatible model
Eiffel

in MySQL-compatible model
Erlang

in MySQL-compatible model
Haskell

in MySQL-compatible model
Java

in Oracle- and MySQL- compatible models
JavaScript (Node.js)

in MySQL-compatible model
Objective-C

in MySQL-compatible model
OCaml

in MySQL-compatible model
Perl

in MySQL-compatible model
PHP

in MySQL-compatible model
Python

in MySQL-compatible model
Ruby

in MySQL-compatible model
Scheme

in MySQL-compatible model
Tcl

in MySQL-compatible model

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

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

PL/SQL in oracle-compatible mode, MySQL Stored Procedure in mysql-compatible mode

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

none

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

horizontal partitioning (by hash, key, range, range columns, list, and list columns)

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

yes, but depending on the SQL-Server Edition

Multi-source replication using Paxos

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

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

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

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

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Access rights for users, groups and roles according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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