DBMS > Interbase vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. PostGIS vs. SAP Adaptive Server

System Properties Comparison Interbase vs. Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. PostGIS vs. SAP Adaptive Server

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Light-weight proven RDBMS

originally from Borland

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

Spatial extension of PostgreSQL

The SAP (Sybase) Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) is an enterprise-class RDBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

Relational DBMS

Spatial DBMS

with Boeing's Spatial Query Server

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

Score	4.61
Rank	#72	Overall
	#39	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	22.69
Rank	#29	Overall
	#1	Spatial DBMS

Score	36.31
Rank	#25	Overall
	#17	Relational DBMS

Website

www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

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

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

postgis.net

www.sap.com/products/technology-platform/sybase-ase.html

Technical documentation

docs.embarcadero.com/products/interbase

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

postgis.net/documentation

help.sap.com/docs/SAP_ASE

Developer

Embarcadero

Microsoft

SAP, Sybase

Initial release

1984

1992

2014

2005

1987

Current release

InterBase 2020, December 2019

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

3.4.2, February 2024

16.0

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

commercial

Open Source

GPL v2.0

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++

C and C++

Server operating systems

Android
iOS
Linux
OS X
Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

hosted

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Unix
Windows

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.

export as 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

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

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

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

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
Object Pascal
PHP
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

C
C++
Cobol
Java
Java
Perl
PHP
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Interbase procedure and trigger language

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

JavaScript

user defined functions

Java and Transact-SQL

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

JavaScript

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

based on PostgreSQL

horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Interbase Change Views

none

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

yes

based on PostgreSQL

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

Multiversion concurreny control

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

yes

based on PostgreSQL

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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