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DBMS > Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. MySQL

System Properties Comparison Microsoft Access vs. Microsoft SQL Server vs. MySQL

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines
NameMicrosoft Access  Xexclude from comparisonMicrosoft SQL Server  Xexclude from comparisonMySQL  Xexclude from comparison
DescriptionMicrosoft Access combines a backend RDBMS (JET / ACE Engine) with a GUI frontend for data manipulation and queries. infoThe Access frontend is often used for accessing other datasources (DBMS, Excel, etc.)Microsofts flagship relational DBMSWidely used open source RDBMS
Primary database modelRelational DBMSRelational DBMSRelational DBMS infoKey/Value like access via memcached API
Secondary database modelsDocument store
Graph DBMS
Spatial DBMS
Document store
Spatial DBMS
DB-Engines Ranking infomeasures the popularity of database management systemsranking trend
Trend Chart
Score95.36
Rank#13  Overall
#9  Relational DBMS
Score785.01
Rank#3  Overall
#3  Relational DBMS
Score987.11
Rank#2  Overall
#2  Relational DBMS
Websitewww.microsoft.com/­en-us/­microsoft-365/­accesswww.microsoft.com/­en-us/­sql-serverwww.mysql.com
Technical documentationdeveloper.microsoft.com/­en-us/­accesslearn.microsoft.com/­en-US/­sql/­sql-serverdev.mysql.com/­doc
DeveloperMicrosoftMicrosoftOracle infosince 2010, originally MySQL AB, then Sun
Initial release199219891995
Current release1902 (16.0.11328.20222), March 2019SQL Server 2022, November 20229.0.0, July 2024
License infoCommercial or Open Sourcecommercial infoBundled with Microsoft Officecommercial inforestricted free version is availableOpen Source infoGPL version 2. Commercial licenses with extended functionallity are available
Cloud-based only infoOnly available as a cloud servicenonono
DBaaS offerings (sponsored links) infoDatabase as a Service

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SQLServer Flex @ STACKIT offers a managed version of SQL Server with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.
Implementation languageC++C++C and C++
Server operating systemsWindows infoNot a real database server, but making use of DLLsLinux
Windows
FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows
Data schemeyesyesyes
Typing infopredefined data types such as float or dateyesyesyes
XML support infoSome form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.yesyes
Secondary indexesyesyesyes
SQL infoSupport of SQLyes infobut not compliant to any SQL standardyesyes infowith proprietary extensions
APIs and other access methodsADO.NET
DAO
ODBC
OLE DB
ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
OLE DB
Tabular Data Stream (TDS)
ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API
Supported programming languagesC
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
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl
Server-side scripts infoStored proceduresyes infosince Access 2010 using the ACE-engineTransact SQL, .NET languages, R, Python and (with SQL Server 2019) Javayes infoproprietary syntax
Triggersyes infosince Access 2010 using the ACE-engineyesyes
Partitioning methods infoMethods for storing different data on different nodesnonetables can be distributed across several files (horizontal partitioning); sharding through federationhorizontal partitioning, sharding with MySQL Cluster or MySQL Fabric
Replication methods infoMethods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodesnoneyes, but depending on the SQL-Server EditionMulti-source replication
Source-replica replication
MapReduce infoOffers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methodsnonono
Consistency concepts infoMethods to ensure consistency in a distributed systemImmediate ConsistencyImmediate Consistency
Foreign keys infoReferential integrityyesyesyes infonot for MyISAM storage engine
Transaction concepts infoSupport to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of dataACID infobut no files for transaction loggingACIDACID infonot for MyISAM storage engine
Concurrency infoSupport for concurrent manipulation of datayesyesyes infotable locks or row locks depending on storage engine
Durability infoSupport for making data persistentyes infobut no files for transaction loggingyesyes
In-memory capabilities infoIs there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.yesyes
User concepts infoAccess controlno infoa simple user-level security was built in till version Access 2003fine grained access rights according to SQL-standardUsers with fine-grained authorization concept infono user groups or roles

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More resources
Microsoft AccessMicrosoft SQL ServerMySQL
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