DBMS > dBASE vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft Access vs. MySQL vs. Oracle

System Properties Comparison dBASE vs. MariaDB vs. Microsoft Access vs. MySQL vs. Oracle

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.

MySQL application compatible open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine and MariaDB Xpand supports distributed SQL.

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.)

Widely used open source RDBMS

Widely used RDBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Key/Value like access via memcached API

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS

Document store
Graph DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
RDF store

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Spatial DBMS

with Oracle Spatial and Graph
Vector DBMS

since Oracle 23

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

Score	11.18
Rank	#44	Overall
	#28	Relational DBMS

Score	93.81
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Score	105.40
Rank	#11	Overall
	#8	Relational DBMS

Score	1087.72
Rank	#2	Overall
	#2	Relational DBMS

Score	1234.27
Rank	#1	Overall
	#1	Relational DBMS

Website

www.dbase.com

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

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

www.mysql.com

www.oracle.com/database

Technical documentation

www.dbase.com/support/knowledgebase

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/access

dev.mysql.com/doc

docs.oracle.com/en/database

Developer

Asthon Tate

MariaDB Corporation Ab (MariaDB Enterprise),
MariaDB Foundation (community MariaDB Server)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Microsoft

Oracle

since 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun

Oracle

Initial release

1979

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

1992

1995

1980

Current release

dBASE 2019, 2019

11.3.2, February 2024

1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019

8.3.0, January 2024

23c, September 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

commercial

Bundled with Microsoft Office

Open Source

GPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available

commercial

restricted free version is 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.

Aiven for MySQL: Fully managed MySQL, deployable in the cloud of your choice, with seamless integrations and lightning-fast setup.

Implementation language

C and C++

C++

C and C++

Server operating systems

DOS

dBase Classic
Windows

dBase Pro

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Windows

Not a real database server, but making use of DLLs

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

Data scheme

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

yes

Schemaless in JSON and XML columns

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

with proprietary extensions

yes

but not compliant to any SQL standard

yes

with proprietary extensions

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

none

The IDE can access other DBMS or ODBC-sources.

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

ADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

JDBC
ODBC
ODP.NET
Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Supported programming languages

dBase proprietary IDE

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

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

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

C
C#
C++
Clojure
Cobol
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Fortran
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Objective C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Tcl
Visual Basic

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

The IDE can access stored procedures in other database systems.

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

proprietary syntax

PL/SQL

also stored procedures in Java possible

Triggers

yes

since Access 2010 using the ACE-engine

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

none

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

none

horizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric

Sharding, horizontal partitioning

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

none

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

can be realized in PL/SQL

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

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

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

but no files for transaction logging

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

ACID

isolation level can be parameterized

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

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

with MEMORY storage engine

yes

Version 12c introduced the new option 'Oracle Database In-Memory'

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

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Competitive advantages

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Typical application scenarios

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Key customers

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Market metrics

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Licensing and pricing models

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